


Crown of Laurels

by Flora_Obsidian



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Ensemble Cast, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Recovery, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Trauma, alternative pairings: cousland/happiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:41:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24565564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flora_Obsidian/pseuds/Flora_Obsidian
Summary: It is 9:31 Dragon. The Blight has ended, but the darkspawn threat remains as Warden-Commander Aedan Cousland struggles to rebuild the order and protect the arling of Amaranthine, bereft of friends and allies.A slowburn Nathaniel/Cousland/Morrigan fic which parallels the events of DA: Awakening and its aftermath.
Relationships: Male Cousland/Morrigan (Dragon Age), Male Cousland/Nathaniel Howe, Male Cousland/Nathaniel Howe/Morrigan (Dragon Age)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where this fic came from, except that by the time I realized I could leave quarantine I had nearly 20k in the word doc and it's only gone up from there.
> 
> Anyway. Cousland/Nathaniel is already a good enemies-to-lovers kind of trope. But it could be gayer, y'all.
> 
> ~~could really be gayer if Bioware wasn't a coward and let you romance Morrigan as a woman, but I digress~~
> 
> The world state:  
> \--Alistair is king with Anora as queen  
> \--Morrigan romanced, the dark ritual completed  
> \--all party members recruited, personal quests completed

It’s raining in the arling. 

It usually rains in these parts of Ferelden, Aedan knows, well used to the mud of Highever in the spring. The arling isn’t too far south from there, and close enough to the coast that the Waking Sea can be seen as a blueish streak on the horizon… when the weather is clear, at least. 

Mabs licks at his hand, and Aedan spares her a pat and a smile. Of all the things to get homesick over, mud is a strange one—but it does remind him of home, in its own way, and the days on the road with his friends. Still, the past isn’t something he can afford to dwell on right now. There are darkspawn left to deal with, and Vigil’s Keep is far bigger than his ancestral home was. Is. He hasn’t gone back yet. Fergus is handling matters as the new Teryn, and from his brother’s letters everything seems to be going as smoothly as it could be. He just remembers—

The point is, there’s quite a lot to do, and not nearly enough people to do it. Nothing he isn’t used to, of course, but the task is daunting all the same.

Stepping out from the alcove at the main doors, he’s drenched in a handful of seconds, the cold wet seeping under his armor. The stonemasons and soldiers rush by in the low light of an afternoon storm, trying to put what they can to rights with supplies so limited, and he intends to check in with a few before departing for the city of Amaranthine; if he has business there as well, it’s no trouble to see if he can secure a shipment or two of supplies back to the Keep. Between his name, a bit of coin, the promise of a guard… 

Well, they’d manage. He and the others had stopped the Blight with only blind luck and the grace of Andraste, and he has no intention of failing in the aftermath with the resources of an arling behind him now. 

Speaking of guards, he nods respectfully to the pair standing at attention outside the doors which lead to the lower levels of the Keep—the dungeons. Aedan hasn’t been down there yet, hasn’t had the time, but he remembers the state of the dungeons in Denerim. Howe had less than a year to create such a sight, and he hardly dares to imagine what such a place could look like after a lifetime. But he isn’t going all the way down. Just to the closest cells.

“Commander!”

The guard by the single occupied cell that Aedan can see startles to his feet, nearly overbalancing his chair in the process. Aedan doesn’t begrudge him that, for the most part. Standing all day can be tiresome.

“Good thing you’re here, ser,” the man continues after saluting, as Aedan stops, squints through the bars of the only occupied cell in the row. That _can’t_ be. “This one’s been locked up three nights, now. Good men and women died while _this_ one was protected in his cell.”

His throat feels dry, all of a sudden, and yet his voice comes out steady. Strange, how that always seems to happen.

“Leave me to talk with him,” he says, and the guard salutes again before stepping out. At his words, the prisoner in the cell looks up—and it _is_. It’s been years, but he recognizes the sharp face, the gray eyes. He can see the anger of the man’s father in the glare leveled his way. At his side, Mabs growls, low and fierce.

“If it isn’t the great hero,” Nathaniel Howe spits out, not even bothering to get to his feet. “Conqueror of the Blight, vanquisher of all evil. Aren’t you supposed to be ten feet tall, with lightning bolts coming out of your eyes?”

“The darkspawn certainly seem to think so,” he answers on automatic. Howe rolls his eyes, scoffs.

Aedan bites down hard on his tongue. 

Eldest son of Rendon Howe, the would-have-been-Arl. Last Aedan knew, he was in the Free Marches, but—no, no, this makes sense. It’s been long enough for word to travel across the Waking Sea, and he knows well the _burning_ of finding everything you’d had, lost. It’s enough to drive a man to murder.

“Well, I supposed they’d know.” Howe stands, dressed in the same linens he’s been wearing the past three days, and manages to look every inch the noble heir. The air in the room seems to ring, a high-pitched whine that sets his skin crawling. “And _I_ know you: my father’s killer. My family owned these lands until you showed up—tell me, do you even _remember_ my father?”

Oh, does he _remember_.

Aedan steps closer, so he and Nathaniel are separated only by metal bars and a few handbreadths of empty air. He hopes the same anger he can see is mirrored back. Hopes how he _relishes_ in this role reversal is plain on his face.

“Your father,” he says quietly, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword, “deserved the end he got.”

Something flickers. Recognition? Realization? Had he not _known_? But it’s gone too quickly for Aedan to try and parse, and Howe’s mouth is set in a harsh frown.

“Your family was going to sell us out to the Orlesians—”

“Oh, and I suppose your _father_ told you that?” he sneers. The Teryn of Highever, the family Cousland, survivors of White River, who had lost life and limb for Ferelden’s freedom, _Maker_ , give him strength. It takes everything in him not to reach through the bars and—

“How could he?” comes the response, quick as a whip and with just as bitter a sting. “A Grey Warden stole his estate and slaughtered him before I could even talk to him.”

Howe spits through the bars and turns, and Aedan can feel the leather of his gloves creak with how tightly his fists are clenched. But he says nothing, watching Howe pace, trapped. _How does it feel? How does it feel to lose everything?_

“I was going to kill you.” Howe spins, speaks, stares at him, but though the anger is still there, it’s… less. A sight at odds with the words, the bold confession. “To lay a trap for you. But then I realized I just wanted some of my family’s things. It’s… all I have.”

And likewise, Aedan feels all the rage drain out from him in a rush, leaving behind nothing but an old, bone-deep pain. The weight is heavy on his chest, and he eases his grip on the sword at his side, an heirloom carried for months and months, always afraid he might somehow lose it. The same way he’s lost everything else.

“How much do you know of what your father did?” he asks quietly. If the news about the Howes and Couslands hadn’t come directly from Howe Senior, it has to have come through the twisting vines of the gossip mill, and Maker only knew how distorted it would have become along the way.

“I was squired in the Free Marches, take a guess!” Howe shakes his head. “Look, I don’t know what happened to the Couslands. It sounds like it was horrible. The entire war was. But what my father did shouldn’t harm my whole family! The few of us left are pariahs in our own lands.”

Mabs growls again, and Aedan—doesn’t move. Doesn’t even dare to breathe. 

He doesn’t know.

Howe doesn’t even _know_.

He closes his eyes at night and he can still see the flames, the blood, hear the screams of his family mingling with all the horrors of the Blight in some nightmarish orchestra. There’ve been so many dead, these past... months. It’s only been ten months. 

Andraste guide them all.

“Do you really hate me so much?” Aedan asks, still quiet. Howe doesn’t seem to notice. Or, doesn’t care, maybe. It doesn’t matter. 

“If it weren’t for the Blight, maybe my father never would have done… what he did.” Howe stumbles over the words— _doesn’t know, doesn’t_ _know_ , chants a voice in the back of Aedan's mind with the ever-present whisper of the 'spawn. “But I can’t do anything about the darkspawn, can I? There’s just you and the Grey Wardens, here in my home.”

Aedan doesn’t answer him. He looks at Howe, and he turns away, ignores the glare he can feel prickling on the back of his neck, and waits at the base of the stairs for the guard to return with the seneschal in silence.

“Did you know this was Nathaniel Howe?” he asks when the seneschal bows, more out of curiosity than anything. He doubts there’s been much time for questioning prisoners when the darkspawn keep trying to crawl up the walls.

Judging by the raised eyebrow, he guesses the answer is _no_.

“A Howe?” The older man laughs, though it isn’t a pleasant sound. “It figures one would turn up again. The Howes are… implacable enemies, Commander.”

_The Howes are dead, and the Couslands with them._

Aedan thinks he can hear Morrigan chiding him, her voice as clear as day, like she’s standing by his side again. And yet, he knows what he’s going to say, the decision already made.

“Give the man his family’s belongings and let him leave.”

The seneschal stares. The cell guard stares. Nathaniel Howe, manacled within his cell, stares. Even Mabs makes a curious sounding noise.

“You’re suggesting we let a thief leave with his stolen goods?”

“Family heirlooms cannot be stolen by those of said family,” Aedan says firmly, and gestures to the door. In a tone brooking no argument: “Let him out. Make sure he leaves the Keep.”

“Commander—”

“ _Yes_ , Seneschal?”

Varel looks at him incredulously, but Aedan is the ranking officer in the room, Warden-Commander and the Arl of Amaranthine; the other man stays silent. Hesitantly, the guard goes to unlock the cell doors. Aedan, feeling tired, doesn’t bother looking at Howe as he leaves.

There is still work to be done. He can rest later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the prologue here !! Updates will be admittedly sporadic, since the fic is incomplete and the present circumstances are....something, but I have a lot prewritten. 
> 
> If you would like to read the multi-Inquisitor AU I have, please check out "The Precipice of Change" in my fics, and @inquisitwors-story on Tumblr. For more writing updates and such, come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian.
> 
> Take care, all. Thank you very much for reading. Comments and kudos, as always, are appreciated <3


	2. Amaranthine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Nathaniel makes a (re)appearance and Cousland continues to be our resident sad lad.

Sleeping does not come easy. Though, it rarely does these days.

Aedan spends half the night plagued by fitful nightmares, and half staring at the ceiling wondering whose bed this used to belong to. It’s a nice enough room, though not particularly lavish, so he thinks, _hopes,_ it wasn’t once a family room. The idea of living in the same house that Rendon Howe once lived in is already enough to make his skin crawl. Of staying in the same rooms? No. Just—no, no.

The room they’d shown him to upon arriving had been much nicer. Aedan had taken one look at it, shut the door, and found somewhere else to put his few belongings.

At the first grey light of morning, he rises, dons his armor, and stops in the dining hall for a quick meal before gathering the last of his supplies he needs to make the trek to Amaranthine. Neither Anders nor Oghren are awake, yet, the former probably sleeping off the nasty effects of the Joining and the latter probably sleeping off whatever else he drank.

Damn, and it’s been a couple months since he’s seen any of his companions from the Blight. He’s going to have to dig out the etiquette crossbow again.

Mabs nudges at him, and Aedan obligingly passes her a piece of sausage. Then a second. Then a third, because she deserves to be spoiled.

“Think I did the right thing?” he asks her quietly.

“Woof,” she answers, and rests her head on his knee and drools all over his armor. He feeds her another piece of sausage. 

There’s still a part of him that relishes how the tables have turned, and he knows that his brother wouldn’t have been nearly so merciful. 

But what’s the point of it? Keeping Howe locked up doesn’t do him any good, and neither does killing him. He hadn’t even been in Ferelden during the Blight.

What’s the point of cruelty for cruelty’s sake?

“Morrigan would tell me I was foolish.”

Mabs snorts, as if to say, _Morrigan always told you you were foolish._ Which, fair. But she had always said it fondly.

“Fergus would lecture me,” he says, and Mabs barks in agreement. That his brother would lecture him is a given, of course—his brother is proud of him, and trusts him implicitly, but he knows Fergus and he knows if Fergus knew that a Howe still lives… 

“Ah, well. Neither of them are here, so.”

He sighs. Zevran is somewhere in Antiva, last he heard; Leliana, in Orlais; Wynne and Shale, somewhere in Tevinter; and Sten even further north returning to Par Vollen. Alistair, of course, is King of Ferelden, which is both close by and yet impossibly far. Oghren is _here_ , but he has his own demons to cope with, and he was one of the last friends Aedan met. A friend he truly knows the least of, in their disbanded group.

And Morrigan is gone.

There’s no time to mope. Still no time to mourn. The Blight may have ended, but the darkspawn continue to remain a threat, and it’s on him to deal with it. 

Anders stumbles into the room while Aedan remains lost in thought, disheveled and in need of a shave. He’s wearing yesterday’s robes; Aedan makes a mental note to talk with the quartermaster, see what supplies were brought in from Weisshaupt. Blindly, Anders reaches for the closest platter of food and starts to eat like he hasn’t had a proper meal in days. 

Though, given that he was in the process of being taken back to the Circle by Templars… maybe it isn’t just the hunger which follows the Joining.

“Pace yourself,” he advises, pushing a jug of water down the table, closer to where Anders sits. “You’ll be hungry like this for a few days, but if you eat too much you can still make yourself sick.”

“Fanks,” Anders replies around a mouthful of biscuit.

“We’re to be making for Amaranthine later today,” Aedan continues, eating at a slower pace. Though, for all the appetite of Grey Wardens, he’s rarely been _hungry_ since the Castle was sacked. He’s known hunger, but the drive to eat? They’re two separate things.

The food is good enough. He won’t let it go to waste. 

“Once we’re there, we’ll be looking for information about Warden Kristoff’s whereabouts, as well as tracking down those two hunters who claim to have seen where the darkspawn came from. Past that, there’s some farms along the way who’ve sent concerns to the Vigil, and I mean to check in with them on our return trip.”

Anders waves a hand in his direction to indicate that he’s still listening, even as he reaches for another platter.

Aedan thinks about the soldiers he’s known, and the order of Cousland Castle from—before. He thinks about how it was on the road with his friends: an assassin, an apostate, a golem, a bard, a dwarf with fewer than six months topside, a Circle mage, a soldier of the beresaad. Of them all, Sten is the only one with any true military training. Oghren’s formerly warrior caste, true, but berserkers aren’t built for fighting in a group.

He probably should try to enforce some kind of standard. 

Oghren stumbles in about then, looking worse than Anders does, and drinks from his flask as he piles food onto his plate. Mabs trots away from Aedan’s side to snap up any scraps he drops.

Some kind of standard. _Any_ standard. 

He chooses to at least wait until they’ve finished eating to repeat the plan for the day. 

* * *

They march. 

And that, at least, is something they’re all used to, between one thing and another. Anders might be a mage, too-skinny and unused to carrying anything beyond his staff and the robes on his back, but he’s evidently run from the Circle and been returned at a forced march enough times to be comfortable walking long distances. Oghren doesn’t trust horses. Aedan hasn’t had the luxury of a carriage or a horse or, on some days, so much as a _tent_ in close to a year. 

Amaranthine is a journey of a day, from the Vigil. Anders cracks jokes for most of it, and Oghren pretends to be annoyed by it, and Aedan makes a game of working as many puns into his words as he can manage while still making them seem unintentional. It passes the time, if nothing else. They keep to the main road, and are on the lookout for darkspawn, but see none and sense none past that. 

“You know, I bet people would probably hate to learn the Wardens use blood magic,” Anders says at one point. Aedan wrinkles his nose.

“I imagine that’s part of our Order’s reason for insisting on secrecy,” he replies after a moment’s pause. “I’m not entirely for that secrecy, mind you, though I do understand it.”

And then much of the travel is spent discussing the Wardens, what little Aedan knows of them. He tries not to let on to that fact. He thinks, even, he succeeds. Besides, right now the duties of the Grey Wardens are simple and urgent. Kill the darkspawn who attacked the arling and find out _how the hell they talk._

Upon arriving in the city, the guards want to frisk them down, which Aedan nearly rolls his eyes at but accepts. The Guard-Captain is horrified at what he sees as a slight against the Wardens, to which Aedan only says, “Better to be cautious than not,” and doesn’t think about accepting _friends_ into his home. Late as it is, they rent rooms in one of the nicer inns, more than happy to accommodate the Wardens in blue cloth and grey steel. 

Oghren snores. Aedan had managed to forget that, somehow. He can hear it through the walls. 

After a morning meal, not surprising in the least, there are countless tasks that others seem to believe only the Wardens can complete. Aedan tries to keep them focused, but even so he needs to split their group up. Oghren to a cheaper inn near the market district to look for Kristoff. Anders to the marketplace to talk with the Merchant’s Guild. Aedan, to the Chantry, and to find the two hunters who’d supposedly seen the darkspawn.

(In part, he hopes to find some information from the Chantry. And in part, he can pretend for a moment in the quiet of the grand halls that everything is for once _okay._ It’s a detour, but no one is there to question him except for Mabs, and Mabs is as loyal a mabari as they come.)

They meet back up outside the city gates, watching the refugees either move past or drift between the makeshift camps set up outside. It’s pushing into the afternoon, and Aedan had been hoping to get back to the Vigil before nightfall today, but instead it looks as though they’re going to need to spend another night here before returning.

“Kristoff was goin’ to some place called, er… well, can’t rightly remember the name of it, but I took the papers from his room, ‘n what I could find of his things. Barmaid said he’d rented the room until the end of the month.”

Oghren passes over a satchel to Aedan, which, he sees glancing in, is full of papers pushed haphazardly inside, a Grey Warden emblem, a couple of scrolls and books.

“The fellow who manages the Merchant Guild’s board postings, Kendrick, I think? He’s got a few things he thinks could be mutually beneficial for the Wardens and the Guild, if we could help him out. And the _other_ fellow said the attacks on their caravans are happening somewhere in the Wending Wood, further south…”

Anders passes him a couple letters, sealed with wax and stamped with a looping _MG._ Aedan puts them in the bag with the papers Oghren found, glances up towards the sky. 

Afternoon, but they _did_ get what they came for… 

“The chasm where the darkspawn were reportedly crawling out from is also deep in the Wood, so we’ll deal with both once we get there,” he says. “As it is, the farms I’d like to check in on are halfway between here and the Vigil, and we’d likely need to stop a bit at each one. The trip back is going to take a day and a half, good weather, no way about it. Unless either of you have further business or suggestions for what to do in the city, I say we gather up and head out.”

There’s smuggling and corruption that the city guard are unequipped to deal with, and he _will_ deal with it. Himself, if he must. But they have to report back to the Vigil first.

Anders waggles his eyebrows with a characteristic smirk. “I _mean_ … I can always think of a few things to do in a big city, freshly escaped from the Templars.”

Oghren sniggers.

Aedan... would have laughed, once.

“Any _relevant_ and _appropriate_ suggestions to make to one’s commanding officer?” he asks with a sigh.

There are none.

They set off.

* * *

They reach the first farm around nightfall, and the older man and his wife who till the land are all but tripping over themselves upon realizing that the Wardens have sent _three_ of their number to check on them in person. Aedan takes it in stride, and asks the things he needs to ask, _have you noticed the darkspawn on your lands, where did they seem to be heading, have there been strangers passing through…?_

The ‘spawn haven’t made it there, yet, as it happens, which is _something_ going right, at least. They refuse a meal, having their own rations and knowing how little food many of the peasants and farmers have, though the farmer’s wife brings them out a hot loaf of bread anyhow.

“You’re too kind, ma’am,” Aedan tells her, seeing a steely glint in her eye that reminds him of Mother Anna, who had always been particularly stubborn whenever someone thought they could push her around. He takes the bread. 

“Sarah,” she says. “And _you_ , ser, are too kind. Coming all the way out here, it’s more than those Howes ever did for us during the Blight! Not sad to see them leave, no, ser…”

He smiles tightly. The bread tastes dry. He eats it anyway. The three of them sleep in the barn, which is cold this early in the spring but keeps the wind out, and begin their march anew in the morning.

The second farm is burning.

On the eastern coast of Ferelden, the Frostbacks are a part of the distant horizon, a smear of gray across the rolling plains that stretch from the Waking Sea to the Hinterlands and the Imperial Highway. It’s easy to see the black smoke billowing up into the sky, and only a few minutes after they’ve quickened their pace that Aedan can feel his blood start to burn.

 _Darkspawn,_ he thinks grimly. Oghren is hefting his battleaxe, though they’ve minutes still to get there, even running, his teeth bared. Anders is pale but determined.

Aedan looks between them and feels a little bit like he’s with friends again. But they have a battle to fight, and he has no time to dwell on such things.

He starts to gesture, Oghren, to take point; Anders, to flank left while he flanks right. But Anders didn’t walk with him for months through Ferelden, has only fought the darkspawn a handful of times in the chaos that was his arrival to Vigil’s Keep. He doesn’t know the hand signals, combinations of ones the Wardens used, and dwarven gestures, and sign language Wynne had picked up from the Circle.

So he keeps his voice to a low murmur, directing them, “That small rise, to the left of the fire. Try and pick off the ones on the fringe while Oghren distracts the bulk of them. We don’t know how tightly clustered they are, yet, so try to avoid anything… explosive.”

“You mean I can’t just hurl a fireball to them?” Anders asks lightly. “Shame.”

They split.

The burning in his veins only grows as he sweeps around to the right, bow in hand and an arrow resting against the bowstring, trying to keep out of sight; the ‘spawn are hooting and snarling to each other in whatever passes for their language, when their language isn't Trade. Half a dozen that he can count—or, seven, _eight,_ two more coming around the back of what used to be a barn and is now a pillar of fire and smoke. 

He can see Oghren, less subtle, crashing through the tall grass and moving fast. Some of the darkspawn do as well, and start to turn. It’s difficult to tell at this distance, but Aedan doesn’t see any emissaries. Two hurlocks, four genlocks, two more bent over and their height uncertain. 

He raises one fist in the air to signal Oghren. The dwarf’s battle cry echoes, a signal of its own, and he lets an arrow loose at the same time a flash of light comes from the far side of the burning barn and farmhouse and one of the genlocks seems to find its feet frozen to the muddy earth.

Aedan lets his arrows fly, picking off the ones he can, not willing to risk hitting Oghren. It’s a successful ambush, as the few who break away need to charge a good distance up a rise to get in swinging distance of him or Anders; Oghren keeps the bulk of the group distracted, and the genlocks who try to rush them don’t make it very far. Yet—Oghren, fighting six at once, and three corpses on the ground riddled with arrows. Another of the ‘spawn breaking away to charge to where he last saw Anders. There’s more than he thought, and he can’t see where they’re coming from—-

A hurlock comes crashing through the brush, screaming, its mouth open so wide that its skull nearly splits in two, streaked with gore and a jagged, rusty greatsword held aloft. Aedan swears and jerks back—only manages to fire off a single arrow that deflects off the piecemeal armor the creature wears before he has to stumble back to avoid getting skewered. 

He grips his longbow and swings it like a club, knocking into the creature’s head, slowing its charge for a heartbeat, enough for him to draw his sword but not quite enough to bring his shield around as well, and he’s on the defensive too far back for Oghren to help, not even sure that Anders can _see_ him around the burning barn—he whistles, sharp, hoping that Mabs will hear him and parries a blow that shudders down the blade and nearly makes him drop his sword—-

_Thwip._

A single arrow, burrowed into the hurlock’s skull. Its scream tapers into a gurgle as it sinks to its knees. Aedan takes his head off with a swing of his blade, snatches up his bow, and turns to scan the field—

—there. A dark figure, past the burning crops and the scarecrows, and Aedan raises a single hand in thanks, all he can spare, before he throws himself back into the fight. Picks off two genlocks coming up on Oghren’s flank. A third drops from an arrow he didn’t fire. A fourth freezes, and shatters at a blow from Oghren’s battleaxe.

Seconds or minutes later, he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to think about it. There is nothing but the smell of blood and smoke and burning. His blood burns, too, even still, but it's a lingering feeling as opposed to the awful call of darkspawn.

Mabs pisses on the hurlock corpse lying next to his feet. It doesn’t help the smell. He smiles anyway, and pats her bloodied fur.

He hurries his way to the others. Anders looks shaky. Oghren isn’t quite to the point of words, yet, his breathing more of a low growl. 

“Are either of you hurt?” he asks, sharp, pointed. Anders shakes his head. Oghren is covered in blood, though none of it seems to be his.

The roof of the farmhouse caves in. There are bodies on the ground, all too human. There had been no screaming when they arrived, just the terrible laughter of the tainted creatures that had attacked the place.

In other words, no survivors.

Feeling admittedly shaky himself, the smell of smoke reminding him of things he prefers not to think about, Aedan turns in the direction he’d last seen their archer ally. Sees the figure moving towards them down the dirt path. Sees the figure resolve into a familiar one.

“Well met, Howe,” he calls, and ignores the way his two companions go still and cautious by his side.

“Cousland.”

Howe slows at a short distance from him. He doesn’t look injured, either, which is something. His voice is… neutral. None of the anger it had held, but none of the despair.

“I saw the smoke and heard fighting,” he says after a beat. “Didn’t realize it was the Wardens, though that makes things easier for me.”

“Back for more revenge?” Oghren snarls at him. Howe’s lips press together, thin.

Aedan... wishes the farmstead wasn’t burning.

“I was going back to the Vigil. I had… I had questions.”

_The Howes are implacable enemies._

The farmstead is burning.

Aedan isn’t a fool. He has no room left for flippancy, or for brashness.

“Go on,” he says, and it seems the Maker has some shred of pity left for him, for his voice as ever remains steady.

Howe looks at him, actually and properly meets his gaze, no matter that it seems to pain him. No matter that Aedan struggles to hold it just as much as him.

“You let me go. Just… let me go, despite everything, and you didn’t even know what I would do. I want to know why.”

“We just came out of one fight. I’m not looking for another with you, Howe,” Aedan warns him, except Howe doesn’t appear to be looking for a fight, either. And he’s not entirely sure what to make of it.

“No,” Howe agrees. “I want to know. I want to _understand._ I… I want to help. Protect what remains of my home. Take me with you, Commander. Make me a Grey Warden.”

The air rings. His skin crawls. The farmstead is burning. The smell of smoke is heavy, all-consuming, and Howe speaks the same way as his father did, and—

_I just wanted some of my family’s things. It’s all I have._

_You and the Grey Wardens, here in my home._

Three Wardens in all of Ferelden. Four, if you count Alistair doing his kingly things in Denerim. Too many darkspawn. He’s done more with less.

(he would give anything to spend another night in his family home, in his own bed, without nightmares. just once.)

He’s so tired.

“It isn’t as easy as that,” he warns, and his voice is dry from—smoke, it’s the smoke, and his limbs only feel this heavy as the adrenaline of battle fades. “The Joining ritual could kill you.”

“I have nowhere to go,” Howe shoots back, and his next words send a chill through Aedan even as the fire roars behind them. “I fully expected to die in that cell. Maybe I wanted to. But you let me leave. Make me a Grey Warden, Commander. _Cousland._ Let me _try._ ”

Maker damn him.

Maker damn them both.

Oghren starts to say something, and Aedan holds up a hand. The air is still and smells of death.

“We’re making our way back to the Vigil. I need to report on the state of the farmlands nearby as well as our findings in the city. We should make it back by nightfall with time to conduct the Joining. We’ll deal with what comes after, after.”

He hopes, _prays,_ this is not a decision he will come to regret, like so many other decisions he has made.

“For now: Oghren, Howe, help me with the bodies. Anders, if there’s anything you can do about the fire before it spreads…”

Anders gives him a two-fingered salute, the motion not enough to quite hide the bemusement on his face, and takes up his staff. The air is damp, and in all likelihood it’s going to rain again in the evening—spring, particularly this close to the Storm Coast, is more storms than sun _._ But there’s no telling how far the flames could spread through the tall grasses in the hours between. They don’t need wildfires to fight as well.

Aedan pulls the cowl around his neck up to cover his mouth and nose to block out the smell, and begins to direct the others. The human bodies they find are searched for any identifiers and given pyres, and the darkspawn corpses are stacked and left to the birds.

They march.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading! 
> 
> For other Dragon Age fic and shenanigans, please check out my other story The Precipice of Change, and its Tumblr @inquisitwors-story
> 
> For general writing shenanigans, you can find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian. And, as always, comments and kudos are much appreciated!!


	3. Letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cousland: "I'm not feeling guilty"  
> Cousland: (an unreliable narrator, is feeling guilty)
> 
> Nathaniel: I don't know what happened to the Couslands and at this point I'm too afraid to ask
> 
> Anders: kitty!!!!!

Nathaniel isn’t sure what to make of Cousland.

All he’d known upon embarking for home from the Free Marches that the Blight had ended, the Howes and the Mac Tirs were in disgrace, and _his_ arling was in the hands of the Wardens and their Commander. His father’s murderer.

It wasn’t until he was standing in a cell his father used to throw traitors to the arling that he saw exactly who that Commander was, and oh, the _irony_.

He expects Cousland to hate him. Sometimes, Nathaniel thinks he does. There’s certainly a low-burning anger in his eyes, when he looks at Nathaniel, a certain twist to his mouth. But the rest of the time… 

The rest of the time, Cousland just looks sad. Not angry and sad, the way that Nathaniel feels so much of the time, but mournful, a sadness he carries around with him like a shroud. He looks that way when he thinks no one is watching. And he looks that way when he looks at _Nathaniel_ , and that doesn’t make a damned lick of sense.

He would try to talk to him about it, if he knew where to start. And if when he brought up his family, Cousland didn’t seem like he’d swallowed a whole lemon.

Of course, he’s not questioning the man’s right to his demons. Anyone who lives through a war, never mind a Blight, is bound to have them. Nathaniel has a few of his own. But he’s supposed to serve under Cousland, supposed to fight at his side, and he can’t do that if he can’t bloody well _trust_ the man.

They’d trusted each other once, he thinks. Years and years and years ago, when the Cousland laurels would come to the Vigil and the bears of Amaranthine were invited freely into Highever. Aedan Cousland had been a little auburn-haired boy old enough to play with Nathaniel and Fergus but just young enough to be annoying about it. Smart as a whip, though. He could keep up with their games of knights and Orlesians, brandishing a stick like a chevalier’s sword or throwing twigs and calling them arrows.

He also had a mabari pup. Nathaniel remembers that, because _his_ father never gave him a mabari pup, even though he’d asked.

The pup is a warhound, now. Cousland carries his demons in the sadness of his eyes and the lines in his face, the battle scars, the gray streaking through auburn hair. He’s _younger_ than Nathaniel—twenty-five, he thinks, if he’s remembering correctly. Maybe twenty-four. He looks like he could be forty.

Nathaniel walks through the hallways of the estate he once called home, late into the night. Part of him can’t sleep, in the aftermath of the Joining, a buzzing under his skin and a peculiar alertness keeping him from exhaustion.

Also, he’s hungry.

He knows these halls like the back of his hand. Knows how to sneak in and out of the kitchens. Knows, in theory, the patrol routes the guards would take and how best to avoid them as he starts walking through the basements and everything stored there.

Part of him is angry at sneaking around his house like a common thief again. The rest just isn’t up to interacting with anyone, up to and including the guards. He has _every right_ to be here.

No one is down here. The boxes are gathering dust.

Portraits. His father’s stern face, the distant, empty smile of his mother. A large canvas, framed, half-hidden under a sheet, of the whole family. Delilah is seven. Thomas is five. Nathaniel is twelve. They are solemn and unsmiling, but he can still remember cracking jokes to entertain his little brother, so he’d sit still long enough to be painted.

Books. Must and mildew. The shelves upstairs are filled with countless others.

A doll that he remembers giving to Delilah as a name-day present, tossed into one of Thomas’ old toy boxes.

 _Several_ of Thomas’ old toy boxes. Maker, his father had doted on his youngest the most out of all of them.

...How old had Thomas been, last Nathaniel saw him? Just barely ten, when their father had sent him away to the Free Marches. Ten years old and capable of no wrong. 

Eighteen, never to grow any older.

Nathaniel leans back against the wall and slides down to sit on the floor. He takes another handful of dried jerky from his pocket to chew on. He lifts the sheet off the box nearest to him and finds inside it a small plush mabari, and a whistle carved from wood, and a book which he opens to find filled with pressed flowers and his mother’s neat, precise cursive on every page.

She had never been a kind or loving mother. But she is still _his mother_.

Nathaniel carefully closes the book and holds it to his chest, so that when he lets himself cry, alone, unseen, just for a few minutes himself, he does not ruin the pages.

* * *

Aedan has a small collection of Howe family heirlooms in his room, and he refuses to feel bad about this.

Howe survived the Joining. He seems to get along well with Anders and Oghren, or well enough; Anders likes to poke buttons, and Oghren is… Oghren. Still, the dwarf is acting _kind_ , in his own way, and Aedan resolves to think that over when he actually has a moment. He doesn’t antagonize the guards, and Varel has kept his opinions to himself since that last comment outside the jail cell. As best Aedan can tell, Howe has been reacquainting himself with his old home, and not much else.

Aedan, meanwhile, is reacquainting himself with the process of running an estate. He’d had some experience, but the last time he was overseeing a fortress and its people—

There’s shortages: food, guards, patience, common sense. The nobles of the arling bicker, and he can _see_ it in their eyes and too-formal greetings, how they loathe Amaranthine under a crown of laurels. The peasants and farmers of the arling, whom Aedan is sure can understand the larger picture, are understandably concerned with the immediate present, the lingering darkspawn, the lack of money and food and protection for their own families. 

But he’s doing his best. He’s done more with less, he _can_ make this work. He walks the grounds, speaks to the guards, tries to assuage worries in person where he can. He struggles to sleep, anyhow, and he’s taken up a few late night patrols, often enough that he has a decent grasp on the layout of the Vigil.

Which leads him to that one nagging thought again. He isn’t feeling guilty. He’s picked up odd trinkets here and there, and sometimes he recognizes an item as an heirloom by the emblem of a bear stamped into it, or an etched set of initials. Sometimes, he recognizes it through distant memory and a happier childhood. Sometimes, he overhears a fragment of conversation between Nathaniel and the other Wardens, a piece of a story, and he knows the item he holds is an item Nathaniel remembers.

The lockpicks aren’t in any state to gift, likewise with the whetstone. The bow definitely isn’t, desperately in need of a polish, and it needs to be restrung, and the leather rewrapped. What’s he to do, give the man broken and rusted tools? It feels like rubbing salt into old and unhealed wounds. Aedan just doesn’t have the time to fix any of the pieces, between keeping the Vigil in order, and the apparent crevasse into the Deep Roads that leads near to Kal’Hirol.

He should write to Aeducan about that. The dwarven king, along with the other nobles Aedan had spoken to during their time in Orzammar, had mentioned several times that they were always trying to reclaim the lost thaigs. 

But they’re going to Amaranthine tomorrow, and he needs to meet with the nobles of the arling again, and then double back to investigate the crevasse in the Knotwood Hills and another potential access route to the ‘spawn. Varel has requested to speak with him at his earliest convenience. Maverlies is going to have more letters for him.

Mabs trots over and licks his hand, and Aedan musters up a smile for her. 

“I’ve got you,” he says softly. “And the others. And I suppose that our old friends are just a letter away, in the end, right?”

“Woof,” Mabs answers.

“Yes, well, you are the smarter one here.”

* * *

“Er. Commander.”

Aedan looks up from his plate of food to look at Howe. Or, a point slightly to the left of him. He doesn’t look much at all like his father, Aedan just—struggles, sometimes. 

Howe, for his part, is standing at attention, good as any soldier. The Grey Warden uniform doesn’t quite fit. They’re not exactly getting regular shipments from Weisshaupt, and what the quartermaster has is limited to the supplies Woolesley brought with her and the supplies the dead have left behind. Anders’ uniform is too short in the sleeves by an inch and a half, and Oghren has piecemealed his Legionnaire’s armor with what Warden armor fits him. But they’re making do, and Howe ignores that his sleeves are cuffed twice. 

“Yes?”

“I have... a request.” The words don’t look like they’re _hurting_ him to say, exactly. More that he doesn’t seem to know how to say them. Aedan waits for him to spit the rest out. “I spoke with the groundskeeper earlier today. Samuel. He worked here even when my siblings and I were children. My sister... My sister, Delilah, still lives, he said. In Amaranthine, near the markets. Since we were traveling into the city, I was hoping to get leave. To see her.”

_Fergus... Fergus, is that —you’re alive? _

_Aedan, thank the_ **_Maker!_ **

Of course, he remembered Delilah and Thomas Howe both. Delilah had been closest to him in age, and he was fairly sure their families had been trying to set up a marriage between them. When all three children had come to visit Highever, or he and Fergus got to visit Amaranthine with their parents, Thomas had always tagged along at their heels in all their games. 

Thomas Howe, he knew, had died somewhere in the fighting against the ‘spawn. He… hadn’t thought about what had happened to Delilah, probably should have, given her brother’s initial inclinations towards murder, but he hadn’t. 

He’s been staring slightly to the left of Nathaniel for a long stretch of silence and tries to pretend he hasn’t.

“That can be done,” he says, and his voice, as always, somehow comes out steady when he feels knocked off kilter.

Howe seems surprised. Aedan wonders—he thought that he’d be refused? Forbidden? Maybe, if Aedan was a man more cruel than he is. He’s too tired for any of that.

“...Thank you. Commander.”

Aedan inclines his head in a nod, and Howe, after a beat or two, goes to the opposite end of the table and sits near Anders. They say nothing else to one another for the rest of the meal. 

Still, he’s struck with a thought later in the day, when his mind has settled and he’s going over the preparations for tomorrow, when they depart for the city. He’s sat at his desk, in a room he’s taken for a study, filled with books he’s never read and a large, empty space above the mantle where a portrait of Rendon Howe had been placed; the room was, likely, Howe’s own study when the arling still belonged to him. His skin crawls when he thinks about it too hard. There’s nothing to be done about it. 

He pushes back in his chair, opening one of the drawers at the desk where he keeps old correspondence. There’s one letter, a broken seal of Ferelden’s crown and Alistair’s scrawling penmanship; another, with Leliana’s precise cursive; another, updates from Fergus; but there, at the bottom of the stack and bound separately from the rest.

There are reminders of the Howe family everywhere in this fortress. Aedan expects as much, of course he does, this was as much their home as Cousland Castle was his and his family’s. And yet, he hadn’t been expecting all the little things. This desk had been filled with letters even before he began using it. Ones signed by Delilah, by Thomas. Ones signed by Howe that make him want to scream, want to burn them, and he still doesn’t know _why_ he keeps them, just that—

_Some of the men are not pleased with your plan. They will incite others against you. For the plan to succeed, our forces must be united. If word gets out, if even one of them informs Cousland, it will be your head on a plate. I say this with all due respect, ser._

_We cannot afford an insurrection. Put any troublemakers in chains. Do whatever it takes to weed them out._ **_Whatever it takes._ **

Proof. A reminder. Something? He doesn’t know.

No matter.

Aedan rifles through them, picking out every letter he can find that’s signed by Delilah, looking at them only long enough to find the signature. He sets them aside, places the rest of the old correspondence back into its drawer and shuts it, and gathers up the small bundle as he leaves the room.

He finds Howe on the grounds outside, taking advantage of a rare gap in the early spring rains and staring unimpressed at Anders, who’s lying flat out in the mud to try and coax a kitten out from under the steps to the ramparts. 

Aedan hesitates, both not wanting to interrupt, and also to process whatever it is that he's seeing.

“I think I’ll name him Ser Pounce-a-Lot!” Anders says brightly.

“...Should I come back?” Aedan asks. What he can see of the kitten is a tiny, muddy scrap of fur that might be orange underneath the crime. It moves incrementally towards Anders’ outstretched fingers. “Also, you’re going to have to get the mud out of that armor yourself.”

“Ah, but we’re the Ferelden Wardens, Commander! We have to distinguish ourselves from the Orlesian contingent somehow, don’t we?”

“No need. The Orlesians wear feathers in their uniforms,” Howe says flatly, and Anders laughs loud enough to startle the kitten back further under the steps. 

Aedan feels the ghost of a smile pull at his lips, there and then gone. He thinks about Sten, in one of the villages they stopped in during the Blight, dangling one of his bootlaces above the ground for a barn cat to swipe at, and then pretending he hadn’t been smiling about it.

“Howe,” he says, “a moment?”

Howe’s expression shutters, but he steps away. Aedan extends the small bundle of letters as a peace offering, as best he knows how to make it.

“...What are these?”

“Letters,” Aedan tells him, “from your sister. I found them airing out a room to use for a study, I didn’t. I didn’t read them, except to recognize who wrote them, and then I put them away. I’d forgotten about it until earlier, when you mentioned... ah. I mean to say, you should have them. If you’d like them.”

Howe takes the letters carefully, so as not to crinkle them. The look on his face isn’t especially pleased or grateful, but neither is it outright hostile, and Aedan will take what he can get. 

“...Thank you,” he finally says. “It is. Appreciated.”

“Of course,” Aedan replies.

* * *

They return to Amaranthine, check in briefly with the guards; the smugglers are still well-entrenched, and prices in the Market District are skyrocketing, and Cousland says something about taking care of it while they’re here. Still, he walks at the front of the group like he’s meant to lead, navigating the twisting streets without hesitation. Nathaniel recognizes the route to the markets before they arrive, and he carefully schools his expression not to show surprise. They’re here on _business_ , urgent matters, he wasn’t expecting… 

“Take the time to ask after your sister,” Cousland says to him as they round the corner, and he can hear the merchants hawking their wares. The sights and smells remind him of simpler times, when he was young, when darkspawn were just a scary story to tell at night. 

“If we need to tend to other things first,” he tries to say, but Cousland shakes his head. He looks tired. Doesn’t quite meet Nathaniel’s eyes. He never does.

“I need to talk with Kendrick, of the Merchants’ Guild, on the other side of the square, anyhow.”

And he’s striding away with purpose, the way he always walks. Nathaniel watches him go and adds another piece to the puzzle that is the Warden-Commander. Like all the others, it doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

So he splits off, and Anders and Oghren aren’t quite following him but they aren’t letting him out of their sights, either. No matter.

He’s seen his little sister and brother in every dark-haired child in the Free Marches. Thomas is forever playing pretend, and Delilah joining in with false reluctance. She’s _too old_ for these games, she insists even as she laughs.

So he doesn’t recognize the woman at first, in plain and simple clothes, a basket on one arm as she browses a merchant stall filled with breads and baked goods.

But his sister still wears her hair tied back with a ribbon, something bright and colorful, and she looks _so much_ like Mother did, like that portrait still hanging in the Vigil’s main hall. The curve of her nose and the shape of her eyes are the same as they were eight years ago, just in an older face.

Maker, his _sister_.

“Delilah!”

She turns. Her expression lights up, and she shoves the basket into the hands of the shopkeep and rushes to throw her arms around him, holding him tight. He hugs her back and breathes, slow, in and out. He’s not about to cry in the middle of the street. He isn’t. 

“Nathaniel,” she says, sounding teary herself. “Oh, Nathaniel, I’d feared the worst.”

She stands back but doesn’t let go all the way, and he’s just as reluctant to. He never wants to let go, not for a long, long time. Samuel had told him she still lived, but to see it, to see _her,_ not just her letters, but _her —_

“That’s Grey Warden armor,” she says, and taps the griffons emblazoned on his chest.

“It’s... it’s a long story,” he stammers out, thinking of her letters, of all the things he wanted to say, all the stories he meant to tell her, and his entire mind is a blank. “Delilah. Delilah, I know things have been difficult, worse here than in the Marches, but you can do better than this. You can come back to the estate—”

But she’s shaking her head, and she looks _sad_ , now, why—?

“Oh, Nate. I didn’t marry Albert out of desperation. I _adore_ him. And I… I left the Keep on my own. I had to get away from Father’s evil.”

That isn’t—

“That isn’t—”

“You weren’t _here_ ,” she says, quiet but firm, and her voice doesn’t shake. “You want the culprit who destroyed our family? It was him, without question. And I think… I think you know that, in a way, or you wouldn’t have agreed to join that stuck-up Cousland boy Father always tried to set me up with.”

Anders starts coughing loudly somewhere behind him. Nathaniel doesn’t dare turn to look and see how close the others are, how close the Guild postings are, or how much anyone might have heard. 

“He could be worse,” he allows, and Delilah rolls her eyes. She takes his hands in her own and squeezes them gently.

“I need to pick up a few more things, but then... if you have time, could we sit, and catch up a bit?”

For his sister, he’s always been able to muster up a smile.

“I would like nothing more.”

The shopkeep, still holding her basket, clears his throat. Delilah jumps, then laughs even as she flushes with embarrassment, and pulls Nathaniel along through the marketplace for the last of her groceries before taking him through the streets of the city to a modest home. It’s barely three rooms, sparsely decorated, but there are tiny little things that make it feel like a home: the well-worn rug he recognizes from her childhood bedroom in front of the door, and the silver candlesticks placed carefully above the fireplace. The quilt draped over the back of a chair. The boots placed against the wall, the gloves left on the table like an afterthought.

Delilah puts her basket down and sets about making tea. Nathaniel, unsure of himself for the first time in years, sits.

“I came back as soon as I heard,” he begins, “but I didn’t hear very much, and so much was contradictory. I just knew Father was dead, at the hands of the Wardens, and those same Wardens were living in our home. I thought… I thought you were dead, too.”

“I made it out.” She pours from a chipped teapot into an equally chipped pair of mugs, and presses one into his hands. “Thomas… Father sent Thomas to fight. I only heard the news a few months ago, I never—”

She blinks rapidly, and takes a breath to steady herself. Nathaniel grips the mug in his hands and lets the heat seeping through his fingers ground him.

“I had a funeral for Thomas. Father was in Denerim by then. But they never found his body.”

“I’m sorry, Delilah.”

Forever ten years old, and playing with toy swords. Nathaniel can imagine nothing different.

“Yes. Well.” She sniffs. “I got the news Father was dead with everyone else in Amaranthine, with the announcement the arling was going to the Wardens. I felt like it should have bothered me, Nate, and I was more bothered that it _didn’t._ He’s... he’s still our Father, and he did _terrible_ things, and I feel like I’m doing something wrong in not mourning him.”

“What did—”

He doesn’t want to ask this, but the dwarf refuses to give him a straight answer, and Nathaniel needs to know. He’s terrified to know, but he _needs_ to.

“What did he do, Delilah?”

“You still don’t know?”

“He... he killed the Couslands. Allied himself with Loghain Mac Tir.”

Delilah begins to speak, and their tea grows cold.

She doesn’t know very much, because no one knows very much, but she _does_ still write to her friends in the arling, and she knows how to find the truth in the rumors. Cousland Castle was sacked in the night, upon the apparent discovery that they planned to turn the kingdom over to the Orlesians. Nathaniel knew this. 

Cousland Castle was sacked in the night, torched, and not a single soul was allowed to leave. The bodies were piled up outside and burned. It took three days.

Nathaniel closes his eyes and breathes. He begins to speak. He explains his return to Ferelden, and how he made it back to the arling, and how he intended to get his revenge or die trying all the way until he realized he was just… tired. He explains how Cousland let him go, and why he had to go _back_.

“Wait, that was him? In the market, with the mage and the dwarf?” Delilah exclaims. Nathaniel nods. “But he looked—!”

“Old?” Nathaniel suggests. “I think a Blight will do that to you.”

His sister frowns. “I didn’t recognize him, and I saw him for the First Day celebrations. His whole family came to the Vigil and Father spent the entire time being unsubtle about courtship.”

That… sounded like Father, if Nathaniel was being honest.

“I didn’t _recognize_ him,” Delilah repeats, and shakes her head. “Maker... look at all of us now, Nate.”

When Nathaniel steps out of her house a couple of hours later, promises to write, his head spinning—he’s going to be an uncle in the autumn, an _uncle —_there’s a familiar mabari lying on the stoop. The dog looks up at him, growls low, and then licks his hand.

“Your master asked you to come find me?” he asks. The dog barks, which is neither yes nor no, but sounds suspiciously like an answer all the same, and starts walking back towards the markets. Nathaniel follows, and ultimately finds his way back to the rest of their group near the Merchants’ Guild board.

“She’s well?” Cousland asks him, almost hesitant, and Nathaniel nods.

“I missed her,” he says with more honesty than he intends.

Cousland smiles like a shadow, tired and heavy, and nods his understanding.

“Come now, we need to talk with the Guard-Captain once more. There are smugglers to weed out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sigrun shows up next chapter, and I for one am very excited to finally give the ladies in this game the narrative time they deserve. As always, thank you for reading, and comments and kudos are much appreciated !!
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	4. Sigrun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter Sigrun!! I love my dwarven characters, and Sigrun especially is a joy to write.
> 
> Dialogue you might recognize comes from party banter in Awakening between Sigrun and Anders, Oghren, and Nathaniel. This chapter encompasses the aftermath of the quest "Last of the Legion."

Sigrun is much too cheerful for a dwarf who keeps insisting that she’s dead. Then again, Aedan can see the comfort in that, in knowing that all that waits for you is the surety of an end.

The first step out from underneath the tons of crushing earth and rock is an unparalleled relief. He _hates_ the Deep Roads. His blood burns under his skin every waking moment, and most moments spent asleep, crawling into his dreams—\- 

It’s not so bad as the last time. Then, he’d insisted Alistair stay behind with some of their group in case he didn’t come back. One of the few times the two of them had argued. Their party had already been staying in Orzammar a couple of weeks, and their journey into the Deep to find Branka had taken over a month. A month in the dark, with the skittering of creatures that never knew the sun, and the screeching of the ‘spawn. 

This had taken a handful of days. Maybe a week, if he’s managed to lose track of time, but Aedan is fairly certain it’s been less. He could’ve done without the broodmothers and the towering construct that _breathed fire, holy Maker, get out of the way_ **_move —_**

He can always do without seeing broodmothers. 

Aedan tilts his face up to the sun and breathes fresh air. Behind him, the other Wardens seem to be as shaken as he had been the first time in the Deep. Anders topples over and digs his fingers into the earth to try and ground himself as literally as he can; Howe sits heavily on a fallen log and shivers, pale. 

Sigrun marches right up next to Aedan and takes his hand, following his gaze up to the sky.

“Uh,” Aedan says.

“I’ve never _seen_ it before, okay? Look at it! It’s like, like! Like the whole of it is made of lyrium! Oh! Is that a cloud? I’ve heard some of the merchants who can go topside and folks in the Carta talk about clouds. Do they really drop water? Do you have to stand right underneath them to get wet? Why are they moving? Is—oh, _wow,_ are those leaves, the green things on the brown things—?”

Oghren hadn’t been nearly as enthusiastic about seeing the sky, Aedan thinks, but Oghren is enthusiastic about very few things beyond women and killing darkspawn.

“It’s spring,” he explains. “Or, late winter, perhaps, depending on how you want to call it. All the leaves fall off when it gets cold and grow back as the weather warms. The green are leaves, on the branches. Trees have branches. Ah. Sigrun… why are you holding my hand?”

The dwarven woman looks at their hands, then up at him, and then up past him at the sky. It’s afternoon, by the looks of it, and they’ve a few more hours until dusk.

“I’m pretty sure everyone who says you can fall up into that is a liar, but in case they were wrong, I figured you could catch me,” she answers.

“...Right. Well. Here, hold onto Mabs’ collar for a moment.”

“Oh! Mabs, is that her name? Hi, salroka, aren’t you sweet?”

He leaves Sigrun with the mabari and goes to where the other three are sitting. Oghren is unbothered, taking advantage of the surface light to scrub some of the darkspawn blood from his battleaxe, so Aedan leaves him be and sits down closer to Anders and Howe.

“You both held up well in there,” he says after a pause. “It’s… unnerving, easily. Not as bad as it was in the Blight, but it’s certainly never pleasant, and there’s no easy way to prepare for it besides… well. Going in.”

Anders looks at him, mustering up one of his usual cocky smiles. It’s strained. “You know, Commander… if you’re ever wondering about why recruitment is so low, I think I might have an inkling as to why.”

“I am… glad to see the sun,” is all Howe says. Oghren passes him a flask.

Sigrun chatters on for most of the march. She doesn’t quite _smile,_ for all that she looks at the world in fascination and wonder, for all the quips she makes; the few times she laughs, its short and sharp and humorless. There’s a heaviness around her that Aedan recognizes uncomfortably well. Her tattoos, dark ink against too-pale skin, accentuate the gauntness of her features, and he can see that she hasn’t lived an easy life.

And yet, she _is_ cheerful. He isn’t sure how to describe the dichotomy, just knows that it exists. Every answer she gets about the surface world is followed up with three more questions, and all the while she keeps one hand on one of her daggers and the other at Mabs’ collar. 

“We stop here,” Aedan says as the sun finally dips below the branches of the trees, casting long shadows across the muddy earth. “Camp for the night, make our way back to the Vigil in the morning.”

Anders and Howe both try and fail to hide looks of relief. Aedan wants to offer some comfort, but.... well, what’s there to say against the Deep Roads he hasn’t already given? They settle in, with the comfort of open air and the promise of a sunrise, bedrolls set out around the fire, and agree on a watch rotation before bedding in for the night.

He looks up at the stars above them through the branches just starting to green with the turn of the season, and the moonlight cutting through the clouds, and if he dares to dream that it’s a different group he’s camping with, no one needs to know but him.

* * *

It’s nearly a week back to the Vigil at forced march. No one is happy about this, himself included, but it isn’t as though they could bring horses with them into the Deep.

“Could you set that bush on fire?” Sigrun asks, and Aedan stifles a quiet sigh of relief, that she’s not asking _him_ another question. He’s happy to answer, he truly is, only, a _week_ of marching. His feet ache.

“Probably?” Anders says when he realizes she’s talking to him. “If I wanted to. Which I don’t.”

“Could you freeze it?” she asks.

“Why do you want me to kill the bush?” he shoots back.

“‘Cause it’s there? Dunno. I’m curious.”

“Okay, well, can I ask _you_ a question?” Sigrun shrugs and nods, which Anders takes as a go-ahead to continue. “Is there some great ceremony when someone joins the Legion of the Dead?”

She snorts, flashes another sharp smile. “Yeah, it’s called a funeral.”

“Riiiiight, but. Is it boring and somber, like a regular funeral? I mean, you’re not burying anyone.”

“This is true,” Sigrun says, slowly, and squints up at Anders. “Stone, is it always this bright up here? Stand in some shade, next time. Uh, no, I guess, dwarven funerals involve a great deal of ale and singing. Then there’s an orgy.”

Howe chokes on air. Oghren chokes on his liquor.

“What?” Anders stares. “You’re kidding!"

She laughs. “‘Course I’m kidding.”

It lightens the mood some, for the next leg of the journey. Aedan wants to join in, and musters up a smile when appropriate, but his mind sticks on _funeral_ and all the dead he’s known and he can’t quite seem to shake it. 

Something does twist a little inside him, unlocked or awoken or... something. A spark of old humor, and old _annoyance,_ as Oghren gestures with his flask in one hand.

“Come here often?” he asks Sigrun, who’s stopped with Mabs by the side of the road, peering at the grass and the earth.

“Never been on the surface before,” she answers distractedly. 

“Well, you’re welcome to come with me anytime. _Any_ time.”

_Thwip-_ **_thud._ **

“Ow! Wha—”

Aedan puts another bolt into his hand crossbow and raises an eyebrow. Anders abruptly finds a reason to walk a short distance away and have a coughing fit that sounds suspiciously like laughter.

“Sod and Stone, Cousland, I thought you’d be done with that shit,” Oghren grumbles, kicking the crossbow bolt away from where its ricocheted off his armor and landed on the ground. 

“And I thought we’d established what’s courtesy and what’s creepy, Oghren,” he replies pleasantly.

“Bah!” The dwarf shakes his head in annoyance and stomps off, continuing their march down the road. Howe, bemused, follows with Anders after a gesture from Aedan, and Sigrun is prodded into moving by Mabs.

“Wait, was he being creepy? I wasn’t listening to what he was saying. What did he...? _Oh_ , that’s what he meant. Thanks, Commander. Does this mean I can stab him if he’s bothering me?”

Aedan picks up the bolt from the ground and runs his thumb over the blunted end of it. Still in good enough condition to be reused, and so he places the bolt with the others.

“If he’s _really_ bothering you, ah... Well. Don't hit anything vital. He… isn’t a bad man. I trust him enough to fight with him, to bring him into the Deep as a Warden.” He shrugs, one-shouldered, and continues walking. Sigrun’s footsteps are quick and quiet alongside him. “He’s been through a lot. Copes with it in bad ways. If he keeps saying things that make you uncomfortable, you can tell me. I’ll have a talk with him.”

“Eh. He’s not the only creep I’ve had to deal with. I was a noble-hunter before I joined the Legion, you know? Not for long. Really wasn’t cut out for it. I like being a Legionnaire a lot more, too.”

Aedan allows her this, and thinks back to what little he knows of Orzammar. Dust Town had been something awful (and yet, he’d still been surprised when he saw the alienage in Denerim, thinking, _at least we don’t treat ours like that_ and being entirely wrong), dirty and dark and foul-smelling. Underneath Sigrun’s skull tattoos, there’s a darker mark, an old, raised scar to mark her the same as all the other Casteless of the city—he isn’t quite sure what a _noble hunter_ is, and isn’t sure he wants to ask, but he’s sure it has something to do with that mark.

“Still. We fight together, all of us. If there’s a problem, let me know.”

“Sure thing, Commander.”

* * *

Sigrun survives her Joining. Nathaniel listens as Cousland explains the process to her, talks around the details of it while still trying to give her as much information as he can.

He was told, with Anders, in the aftermath, that the Joining was to be kept a secret, its process, its _existence._ He understands why, even. But Cousland takes the time, as he’d done before, to say _this is a ritual done with old, old magic_ and _the process is a draining one, and you might not survive it_ and _this_ **_will_ ** _mark you as a Warden, even should you choose to leave our ranks, you cannot truly leave this life behind._

Sigrun has no problems with any of this. She smiles, all teeth, and says, “I’m already dead, right? What’s the worst that could happen?” and she takes the chalice Varel hands her without hesitation.

“You… might want to sit?” Cousland suggests, almost uncertain, but the dwarven woman just downs the foul tasting concoction and sways on her feet. Topples to one side a few moments later, eyes rolling back into her head. He manages to catch her in time before she can hit the floor, and gently eases her down the rest of the way.

“She’ll be all right,” he says, after a pause. “Give her a few minutes to come ‘round. Thank you, Seneschal, for your assistance.”

“Of course, Commander,” Varel answers, bows, and gathers the chalice to be cleaned and returned to wherever it is that such things are kept.

Cousland makes sure she’s steady on her feet before sending her off to get some rest, and tells her that she’s likely to be hungrier than normal the next several days. Nathaniel catches her arm before she gets too far though.

“That’s a bit of an understatement, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night to raid the kitchens, more likely than not. And, frankly, I could do with a meal and a drink after that march and the time in the Deep Roads, if you wanted to join me?”

“Always wanted to try surfacer food,” Sigrun replies with characteristic chipperness, though she’s paler than normal, and a tremor runs through her every so often. Nathaniel doesn’t comment. Walks with her to the kitchens, and digs out some of the dried meats from the larder, a couple loaves of bread set aside to cool for tomorrow—those won’t be missed, he’s sure— some cheese, a handful of other things that don’t require cooking. He points out to Sigrun where the plates are kept, and she grabs two. Seeing the food, she mostly ignores said plate in favor of eating what she can as quick as she can.

He was doing the same thing a couple weeks ago, so he doesn’t really have room to judge. He finds a jug of mead on one of the back shelves and brings it over, and they sit at the rough wooden counter the servants usually sit at, and break bread.

“You fight well, Sigrun,” he says, drinking deeply from his cup, relishing in the opportunity to just sit and rest his feet a moment. “The Legion of the Dead trains its people well.”

Along with the rapid pace they’d taken to get back to Vigil’s Keep, they had encountered a couple stray bands of darkspawn near the main road through Amaranthine. It hadn’t been much trouble to dispatch them; these ‘spawn were not the talking sort, and whatever else Nathaniel might say about him, Cousland knows how to fight on the battlefield. Sigrun had been especially deadly, creeping through brush and shadows, a dagger in each hand, and cutting down their enemies before they even knew she was there.

“We do some training,” she tells him, looking pleased at the compliment. “They taught me a few tricks, but I was fighting long before then.”

“Oh? You fought in Orzammar’s army?”

That’s a misstep, though he doesn’t realize it until her look turns into a flat glare.

“Fighting for scraps of food,” she snaps at him, pointing at him with her dagger, her voice as sharp as the blade. “For a place to sleep. For _survival._ ”

Nathaniel fumbles, backtracks: “I didn’t mean—”

She glares at him for a moment longer, then sighs, returns to her food like nothing is amiss. “S’alright. You’re a noble. Might be different up here on the surface, Commander’s a noble, too, and he and you both seem okay sorts. But there’s some things you don’t get unless you’ve lived it.”

Nathaniel accepts this with a nod and thinks.

He’s not known poverty in that way. He may not have had much coming back from the Marches into Ferelden, but he had the coin he’d brought with him, and no one there to recognize him, or to put together that “Nate” was Nathaniel Howe, pariah. Could have been worse, somehow.

The experience had been humbling, all the same. Less angry, now, he can recognize it as something other than shameful.

“I did not mean to offend,” he finally says. “I am sorry if I did.”

She glances up at him, raises one eyebrow, and steals a slice of cheese from his plate. 

“I had very little, when I came back from the Free Marches. The situation is not the same, but… you have my respect, and understanding as best I can give it, for surviving what you did.”

A second eyebrow joins the first. “Didn’t survive. Legionnaire, remember?”

“I—”

“I’m just messing with you.” She steals another piece of food from him. The smile she offers is a little more rounded out around the edges, fewer teeth. “Yeah, you’re an okay sort of noble, Nathaniel.”

“Thank you?”

In retaliation, he manages to swipe a roll of bread from her while she’s turned to refill her goblet. It reminds him of simpler times, with his siblings, sneaking into this very kitchen late at night for snacks. 

“Orzammar has a Caste system,” she tells him between bits of food. “I mentioned that before, maybe? Whatever Caste your parent is, you are. Warrior Caste makes up most of the army in Orzammar, ‘cept for the Legionnaires. We answer to the nobility, which... not the Noble Caste, but, uh… King, or Queen, or whoever’s in charge. Didn’t have anyone in charge for a while, and then I think someone from House Aeducan took the throne? They’d had it before. I dunno. We were trying to find a new path to Bownammar, around then. But this—”

She taps her cheek, and the tattoo that looks older than the rest, disrupting the symmetry of the skull pattern.

“That means I’m casteless. So’s a lot of Orzammar. No Caste, no place… can’t work, can’t join the army, can’t… well. Can’t do a lot of things. So I joined the Legion, ‘cause they take anyone, regardless of Caste, and they let me be something.” For a moment, she sounds melancholy. “Symbolically, we’re dead, but now they’re _really_ dead… I’ll miss ‘em. But being a Warden lets me be something, too. Means I can avenge them, if nothing else.”

He isn’t sure what to say to that, trying to wrap his head around a culture and traditions he knows nothing of, trying to understand how simply being born to one parent instead of another determines what you can be from birth. He doesn’t want to misstep again.

So he focuses on what she’s said last. 

“I think I can understand _that,_ Sigrun. Being something, by being a Warden.”

“You’re a noble,” she says. “Who’s saying you can’t be what you want?"

Nathaniel snorts. Pours himself another drink.

The bitterness still festers in him, weighed down by tiredness, and a growing understanding of Cousland that keeps getting harder to ignore. 

“This fortress used to be my family’s,” he says, and gestures around them. Her eyes go wide.

“Shit, really?”

He nods. “There was a civil war, on the surface. In Ferelden, during the Blight. My family... my _father_ picked the wrong side. As I’m told, he did terrible things, some of them against the surviving Wardens during the Blight, and actively denied that there even was a Blight. So after he died, the King and Queen seized his lands… this place, the entire _arling_ … and gave it to the Wardens.”

“And you went back to it?” Sigrun shakes her head a little. “Damn.”

“I had nothing. And I wanted to understand.” He doesn’t say _what_ he wants to understand. He still isn’t sure. He thinks he’s getting there, though. “None of it’s what I expected. And now… I have something.”

Sigrun raises her cup and knocks it against his. “To having something?”

“To having something,” he agrees, and drinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Opinions expressed by Nathaniel and Cousland are both admittedly skewed at points, and will continue to be-- unreliable narrators are fun to write.
> 
> Re: Oghren, the way Bioware writes his character, he's.....well, awful, to be blunt. I'm trying to take some of his in-game characterization and give it some more depth, as well as make him put in some effort towards a character arc, which will continue with the rest of the story. If there are moments where Cousland seems a little too sympathetic towards Oghren, it's not in acceptance of his behavior, he's just trying not to alienate the only familiar face he has right now.
> 
> People are messy and complex. Likewise with characters, especially in Dragon Age. I'm looking forward to writing more of the DA:Awakening crew.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and comments and kudos are always appreciated <3
> 
> For more writing things, come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	5. Oaths of Fealty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cousland: the resident sad lad  
> literally everyone: dude........you good??
> 
> In all seriousness, this chapter is where the Depression and Trauma tags up there become really prominent, whereas in past chapters they've just been alluded to. Most of the chapter occurs in a heavy depressive episode. Be gentle with yourselves, don't read if you're not up for it. Summary of the chapter can be found in the end notes.
> 
> One last brief(?) note, what is in-game referred to as being golems, I am referring to as being a construct when it comes up. The use of golems as monsters in generic fantasy settings is rooted in antisemetic tropes and I'm not about that.

His 'luck' seems to be holding, Aedan thinks as he wakes up. It's an important day, and he feels... 

For several(?) minutes(??) he lies on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and doesn’t move. There’s a heavy weight on his feet, Mabs, fast asleep and snoring; a heavier, less tangible weight settled into his chest, pinning him down and making him want nothing more than to stay under the blankets and never move again. The room is grey. The sky outside is grey, promising rain.

There were… things… he needed to do today. Several things. He’s an Arl, now. There are bands of darkspawn terrorizing the farms, the city. So, he needs to get up. Do… something.

He sits up, and doesn’t move for another minute or two. Mabs stirs, blinks sleepily at him, and gets up only to lie down in the warm spot on the bed behind him. The flicker of fondness he feels doesn’t quite make it to a smile, but he scratches her behind the ears and pushes himself into standing.

Morning. Things to do. Aedan puts on his armor a piece at a time, laces up his boots. Finds a comb to run through his hair. Rinses the taste of morning breath from his mouth. He thinks it all takes the same amount of time as it usually does, but it feels as though it’s taking twice the effort. When he finishes he stands in the center of the room another minute before remembering to move.

“Are you coming with me?” he asks Mabs.

She opens her eyes just enough to look at him and doesn’t get up.

“Right, then.”

First... should be breakfast. He’s not very hungry. He goes to his office instead, and gathers the papers he had been looking at the other day, lists of names and nobles and grievances. By midday, the last of the landowners in Amaranthine should have arrived at the Vigil, and the rest of the afternoon and evening is to be hearing their oaths of fealty and their petitions.

Aedan wants to sleep. Or, wants to stop. Reading the words on the parchment in front of him is like peering through fog. The letters are there and they have no meaning.

But he skims them over, reads. Folds them away, back into their proper drawer when he’s done. He thinks, even, he might remember some of what’s written later. He considers. He still isn’t especially hungry. There are a few hours left before he’s supposed to be in the main hall. He leaves.

There are family heirlooms in this fortress. Of course there are. It used to belong to the Howes, used to be _home._ Aedan returns to his rooms and retrieves the old longbow he’d found while trying to inventory the Vigil’s armory, nearly three weeks back. It’s fine craftsmanship, but in desperate need of repair. He’d thought he might be able to keep it as a reserve until he’d seen the family crest burned into the wood. Then he’d set it aside.

He hasn’t had time to fix it himself. He hasn’t figured out a way to give back what should by rights belong to Howe without offending the other man. But he knows this old weight around him, and the chill that’s settled into his bones. Alistair isn’t here to sit with him in quiet understanding. Leliana isn’t here to tell her stories. Wynne isn’t here to give advice. Morrigan... isn’t here.

If he does nothing, Aedan isn’t certain he’ll be able to pull himself out again. So he takes the bow, and his feet take him through the Vigil. Outdoors, the air smells like a storm, cold and wet and heavy. 

Wade and Herren have set up shop at a smaller building across the courtyard, with stairs inside that lead to more rooms and then to the barracks. It’s meant for captains of the guard, but they only just have enough guardsmen and staff to keep the Vigil running, nothing close to a full retinue. The space wasn’t being used before. Now it is.

Herren sighs, seeing him walk in. Frowns a little bit.

“Wade has been talking about that construct shell since you brought it here. I don’t think he’s shut up about it since.” He says this in a way that is both fond and incredibly annoyed all at once.

“Ah… sorry.” Aedan can hear noise from further back, where Wade has set up the forge and workbenches and spends most of his hours. “Is he… busy?”

Herren frowns a little bit more. Aedan feels bad for imposing, but they _are_ getting paid to be here. Maybe he can see about allocating more funds? He’ll need to look at the ledgers, but… maybe.

“He’s in the back,” Herren says, “you go on ahead. Just don’t bring him another construct shell. Please.”

Aedan manages a tight kind of smile and moves back towards the forge. Wade is surveying what looks like a seemingly random assortment of materials, mumbling under his breath the whole while, and Aedan has to clear his throat twice to get his attention.

“Oh, hello! Hello, yes, did you find me more things to work with?”

“No, he didn't!” Herren shouts back from the front room. Wade pouts.

“Well, sort of,” Aedan amends. He offers the longbow. “I know you’re busy making weapons and armor for the guards. If… you wanted something to break up the monotony—”

Wade is already grabbing the bow from him, examining it closely. “Now, _this_ is beautiful, a fine piece of work, but why on earth would you let it get like this, mm? The grip alone is bad enough it might need to be replaced…”

Aedan listens to the man talk to himself for another minute before remembering he’s probably supposed to say something, or leave.

“...It can be fixed, then?”

“Mm? Oh, you’re still here, yes, of course I can fix it, who do you take me for?” Wade looks offended by the notion. Aedan bites back an apology, uncertain of what he’d even be apologizing for. “Is there anything you want me to add? If you pick up some heartwood I have a few ideas…”

“No, no, it… this should be as close to its original as you can make it. It… belonged to the Howes. It’s hardly in any condition to return, though. And I trust your work.”

“Well!” Wade looks at him, and then back at the bow. He turns away, clearing space at a workbench to set the bow down, but he keeps talking. “You know! Herren and I argued all the time when we first met. Sorted ourselves out eventually, but we really didn’t get along.”

It’s an odd non-sequitur. Aedan takes several seconds longer than he should to process. He doesn’t think he’s heard the blacksmith say more than a few words about anything other than his work for the entirety of their acquaintance.

“That’s… good?” he finally answers. “When should I return for the bow?”

“Oh, end of the day. Maybe tomorrow morning. And bring any new materials you find when you’re out! I can always use new pieces to work with, reduced to crafting basic armor like some _commoner,_ Maker, maybe another construct shell if you find one…?”

Aedan leaves the men to their wares. A stiff wind blows through the courtyard as he steps outside, and even though Guardian and Wintersend have already passed, it’s a reminder that winter doesn’t quite want to give up its hold. Drakonis is proving to be especially chilly. His armor keeps him warm enough, but all the same, the chill lingers, settled in his bones.

He’s moving. He had a whole conversation. Still isn’t very hungry, but maybe he can eat before he speaks with Varel. Sure. Yes, he can do that.

It doesn’t taste like much, but it’s food.

Varel bows when Aedan approaches, straightens. Pauses.

“Are you well, Commander?” he asks. “I overheard Warden Anders saying you missed the morning meal.”

Aedan also pauses a moment, if only because he isn’t quite sure how to answer. “Well enough, thank you, Seneschal. I wanted to speak with you before the last of the nobles arrived…”

And arrive they do.

“These were Arl Rendon Howe’s vassals,” Varel says, when everyone has assembled in the main hall, “though this does not mean all were in support of him. Some, though, had their prospects ruined at his, ah… untimely end.”

 _Not timely enough._ The spark of anger is just a spark, but all the same, in this moment, Aedan clings to it. The room before him is filled with the lords and ladies of the arling, minor nobles come to pledge their servitude to the new Arl and the Grey Wardens. It almost reminds him of Highever, when his parents would, each year, invite the arls, the nobles, and host a celebration. Usually, for Firstfall. Partly an excuse to celebrate. Partly an excuse to ascertain where loyalties lay.

This is a celebration, as much as it can be this near to the Blight. This is very much a time to find out who he might be able to trust, and who he must look out for.

The room blurs. He misses Highever and those awful, tedious banquets so much that it’s like a dagger to the chest, and it’s everything he can do to keep his expression placid. The spark of anger is smothered by weight. Rain pounds against the windows.

Varel announces him, and the room quiets. Aedan stands, as is expected of him. The other Wardens are here, though they can leave once the vassals have finished their oaths.

There are names, titles, words. He focuses as best he can through the fog. When there is a pause, he speaks, because that’s expected of him, too.

“Our differences are many,” he says. _Who of you lent your men to Howe? Who of you has my family’s blood on your hands?_ “But our cause is one. The Blight has ended, but the darkspawn will not simply vanish. Should we band together in this time… we may yet save countless lives.”

A low murmur sweeps through the room. Bann Esmerelle steps forward, kneels, swears life, limb, and earthly honor. And so it continues.

It’s close to an hour of standing, waiting. He sees Oghren sneak out the back of the room thirty minutes in. He doesn’t see Sigrun at all, which means she’s left earlier, or she’s picking pockets. He should probably be more concerned about that. There are names he should be paying attention to. He’s _trying_ to pay attention. At least when it came to Highever, he had some passing idea of names and faces. He knows almost none of these people.

“...and so the ceremony is complete.” Varel is talking. Aedan’s posture remains as perfect as he can keep it. He’s nodded and bowed at the right moments. He thinks he did, at least. He even keeps himself from sighing visibly in relief; the first part of this is done. “Banns, lords, ladies, we take a brief recess. Your presence honors us, and your loyalty will not be forgotten.”

Conversation sweeps through almost instantly. Aedan looks at the ground for a moment, two. Rolls his shoulders, squares his posture.

“Eddlebrek and Esmerelle are the two you’re going to need to speak to, Commander,” Varel says in an undertone. “Lord Eddlebrek, of the Feravel Plains, owns more farmland than anyone else here. He’s well-liked. Bann Esmerelle has considerable sway in the city. Not as popular, but wealthy, and not one to ignore.

“Eddlebrek,” Aedan repeats. A lone thought drifts from the fog, then a second. “He and my father fought together against Orlais. Do you know where his sympathies lie?”

“He was not a supporter of Howe, so far as I am aware.”

“And he and Bann Esmerelle would be at odds?” Varel looks puzzled. Aedan gathers himself as best he can to elaborate. “We’ve already discussed options, to protect the city, or protect the farms, and their interests would be... split.”

“Ah. Yes, that is a point of contention. At least it is one we are already working to manage.”

He can’t muster a proper smile as he sifts through the assembled crowd, shaking hands, making idle talk. He knows all the right words to say, though. It’s easy enough. _Thank you for_ and _we are honored that_ and _I will look into the matter_ and so on and so on.

Howe is standing off to one side, watching the proceedings unfold and saying nothing until he sees Aedan drifting nearby.

“Tedious things,” he murmurs, so as not to be overheard.

“Mm,” Aedan agrees. 

“Are—”

He starts, stops. When Aedan glances to him, puzzled, he finds Howe looking back with an odd expression that quickly vanishes. 

“Never mind,” Howe says. “Anders mentioned he wanted to speak with you, once all this is done. He left to go steal more wine from the cellar.”

Aedan doesn’t know how to answer that. He nods his thanks and moves back into the crowd. At least, no one seems to have recognized Nathaniel Howe, in Warden garb, lurking at the edges of the room. If they do, they haven’t said anything.

The rain hasn’t let up. It’s looking like it will storm through the day, possibly into the next.

He stands at the front of the room. Varel is speaking. Some of the nobles have grievances to air; others remain solely to see how he handles matters. Just as it is for him, they need to know if he can be trusted, or if he is someone to keep an eye on.

“In the future,” Varel whispers as the first of them step forward, preparing to make their case, “I have the authority to hold court when you aren’t here, but it’s important for them to see this.”

“Understood,” Aedan whispers in reply.

First is a soldier charged with desertion. She stands between two guards, wrists in chains, a stubborn gleam in her eye even as the charges against her are read and the circumstances explained. 

Desertion is a serious crime. Aedan remembers, distantly, in a way that he doesn’t really want to remember at all, lighting the beacon at Ishal as screams and torchlight echoed up to them through falling snow.

He has seen so many people die.

“Her motive mitigates her crime. One year of imprisonment.”

There are a handful of minor nobles with land disagreements— _Arl Rendon Howe promised us —_and doesn’t he want to refuse them based solely on principle? But there are papers, and the Arl has final say over who owns what, and—

A young farmer, charged with death for stealing two bushels of wheat from the crown, out of a shipment bound for Amaranthine. 

Aedan thinks of Alistair, sitting by the Chantry in Lothering, telling stories to some of the children on the steps and giving them pieces of his rations. There is precedent for the laws; stealing from the crown is stealing from the crown, no matter the amount or the type of goods stolen. But the King of Ferelden, Aedan’s friend, would not condemn a man to death for keeping his family from going hungry.

He has seen so many people die.

“Join the army, and your family will be fed,” he says, and the young man all but falls over himself in thanks.

There is to be a dinner that night, with those assembled here. He’s expected to attend. He still doesn’t feel hungry.

He finds Anders as the afternoon is starting to tick over into evening, not long before they’re supposed to be in the banquet hall. The mage is sitting on the floor with a goblet in one hand and a long piece of string in the other, which Ser Pounce-a-Lot is enthralled by.

“Hello, Commander. Everything all right? You’re looking a little, ah. Tired.”

Aedan doesn’t join him on the floor. He does still need to maintain some kind of rank and formality. He also isn’t sure if he’d want to get up again.

“Howe mentioned you wanted to speak with me.”

“Oh! Right, yes. That.” 

Anders pushes himself to his feet, using his staff as leverage, and actually takes the time to tie the piece of string to one end to it to entertain the kitten before speaking. Aedan watches him blankly.

Sten would have—

No, he amends. Sten would not have liked the mage who talked too much and brushed off questions with humor. But they might have found common ground in Ferelden’s cats. 

“I heard some things while… mingling, or whatever it is you noble folk call those parties. Backstabbing? Hunting? It certainly isn’t just _talking_ , whatever it is.”

Aedan dips his head in a nod, the only concession he’ll give to the statement.

“Regardless. I heard some things. A lot of them aren’t happy with you, Commander. A _lot_ of them.” Anders glances up and down the hallway. He looks nervous. “Plotting-to-kill-you kind of unhappy with you. Didn’t get names. Every time I tried to get closer to hear, I think they noticed, and Sigrun might be good at sneaking, but even for her… hard to go unnoticed in the middle of a group like that.”

Huh.

Probably should have expected that.

“I’ll speak to the seneschal about it this evening.”

Anders is staring at him. “...Right,” is all he says. “Okay.”

Aedan starts to turn away, then pauses. Not much longer to keep up the facade of ordinary conversation. Just the dinner. Still, can’t slip up now.

“Thank you for letting me know, Anders.”

“...Yup. Yeah. Not a problem, Commander. Oh, goodness, I think Sigrun needs my help with something, could you watch little Pounce-a-Lot for me? Ta.”

Aedan is holding a kitten in his hands as Anders disappears around the corner. He looks down at Ser Pounce-a-Lot. It’s come a long way from the muddy, drenched thing hiding under the steps. Its fur sticks out in all directions, orange and white. It sits back on its haunches, small enough to fit into the palm of one hand, mews petulantly, then claws up his sleeve to sit at his shoulder. He can hear it start to purr.

It hardly weighs anything, but he can still feel it where its perched. It’s… a comforting weight.

“You were rescued by a very odd man,” he says, and the words come a little bit easier without anyone around to hear them.

Aedan sighs, and turns, and walks.

The dinner… happens. He doesn’t think he makes any blunders. Anders takes the kitten back. Aedan informs Varel, after, of what Anders told him, and the man swears to investigate; idle talk may just be idle talk, but it may not be. He walks back to his chambers, finds Mabs waiting for him at the door.

“Boof,” she says, and licks his hand. Aedan tiredly gives her a couple of pats, goes inside. Takes his armor off, piece by piece. Ties his hair back for the night. Crawls under the blankets.

The rain hasn’t stopped.

He sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes the in-game quests "Oaths of Fealty" and "A Day in Court," which I've smooshed together for the sake of time and narrative flow. It's essentially a chapter of trying to go through the motions and hold up your responsibilities during a time when it takes most of your effort to get out of bed in the morning. Cousland also takes the Howe Bow to be repaired for future gifting to Nathaniel. Anders mentions that he's heard mutterings among the nobles about a potential conspiracy against Cousland.
> 
> As always, thank you all for reading. Comments and kudos are v much appreciated <3
> 
> Come find me on Tumblr @floraobsidian


	6. Gifts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being patient with the delay in this. It's mostly filler, but there's some important Character Moments TM.

The morning is marginally better than the evening and night. Which is to say, Aedan sits up without feeling as though Mabs is sitting on his chest, and he only feels tired in the sense that he didn’t sleep well, not… not tired in the way it usually means.

He didn’t sleep well. But, then again, he rarely does. Through an early-morning haze, he considers the events of the previous day, the plot Anders had uncovered, the decisions he had made, the discussions he’d had with Varel. There’s _something_ he’s forgetting… 

Sigrun had asked him to get the engravings from Kal’Hirol back to Orzammar. He had meant to talk to Dworkin and Voldrik about their discovery, upon returning to the Vigil from the Deep. It had slipped his mind.

“Right, okay.” Aedan scrubs his hands over his face. Breathes. “Coming with me today, Mabs? I’ll give you sausage.”

A promise to his dog is a weak excuse to force himself to go to the morning meal, but he’ll take it.

And he eats, though he isn’t especially hungry. Varel assures him the nobles are being kept under close scrutiny for the remainder of their stay. He gives Mabs bits of sausage. He takes the charcoal rubbings he’d made of the stone markers in Kal’Hirol, ever so careful not to smudge them, and brings them out into the damp morning air across the courtyard to where the dwarven brothers are bickering over a table of schematics.

They’re understandably taken aback, and their bickering turns to how Orzammar will respond. Aedan gets a promise out of them to duplicate the papers, in case someone should decide to “lose” the originals, and leaves them to it.

Sigrun will be pleased.

When he goes to the smithy, Herren just sighs in resignation and waves him past, and Wade leaps to his feet once Aedan manages to get his attention. 

“Quite an engaging project, yes! I’ve also come up with a few ideas, none that I implemented, _see,_ Herren, I _can_ listen to others! This is as close to the original longbow as I could make it, and I dare say, closer than anyone else could do, but if you or that young Howe boy should want an upgrade… well, just let me know, mm?”

Aedan takes the longbow back. It looks as though it could be brand-new, the wood smelling of fresh polish and smooth underneath his fingers. 

“Incredible work, as always,” he tells the other man. “How much do I—?”

“Payment? Pah!” Wade shakes his head. “I should be paying you, breaking up the awful monotony of the day like you did. No, no, free of charge, and do let me know if you find anything else while you’re traveling!”

“Yes, I promise I won’t forget.” Not with that many reminders, he won’t. On the way out, he slides Herren a handful of sovereigns all the same, and the edge of dislike in the man’s gaze softens just a little. He understands the need to make some coin.

* * *

Cousland finds him a little before midday. 

The Commander looks better than he did yesterday. Nathaniel still isn’t sure where the concern he’d felt earlier had come from. He’s come to recognize that despite everything, his father’s death, his confessed intent to murder the Warden-Commander, those missing golden years of childhood when they might have been friends... Cousland is fair. To Nathaniel, to apostate mages, to casteless dwarves, to nobles who, more likely than not, want him dead. 

Cousland is fair, and steady in battle, someone whose orders Nathaniel doesn’t doubt or question; he’s still the Commander, set apart from their ranks, but he’s someone who undoubtedly inspires trust in those who follow him.

A number which Nathaniel is part of, now. And, for whatever reason, he’s still feeling concerned.

It’s hardly his place. His hesitant trust in the man's capabilities doesn’t mean he harbors any sort of fondness towards Cousland; despite this drive to understand him, and the Wardens, and the mess which is his family’s past... hell, most days he isn’t sure if he wants to be in the same _room_ as Cousland. 

And yet, concern.

So reluctantly he lets himself look at the other man, noting that Cousland is _still_ staring at a point slightly to one side of him instead of meeting his gaze. But there’s something behind his stare, now, when yesterday it had been as empty glass, blank, almost lifeless. His mabari is at his side. He moves with more surety.

Why _concern?_

Cousland’s longbow and quiver is strapped to his back, the jagged, oddly-pointed wooden recurve as unique as the armor he wears, more elaborate and well-fitted than anything the recruits have, armor as befits the Commander of the Grey. Interestingly enough, he has a second longbow in his hands, which he—

—offers.

“I was doing inventory, before we left for the Deep.” Cousland looks at the bow. It’s a truly remarkable piece, built with an older design but well-kept... no, not just well-kept, but recently repaired and treated. Nathaniel can smell the leather and polish.

Then Cousland looks up, and actually meets his eyes. Possibly for the first time since they stood, separated by the iron bars of a cell and all the world between them. He looks exhausted, no different than usual, but Nathaniel is struck by the moment.

“It belongs to you,” says Cousland. 

The moment breaks. Nathaniel blinks, looks away. Looks at the bow, and takes it, uncertain. 

“You’re sure...?” he starts, except he doesn’t even finish the last word, sound trailing into empty noise trailing into silence.

This isn’t, is it?

He turns it over in his hands, running his fingers across the smooth wood, searching—

“This is…” He starts, stops, nearly beyond speaking. “It is. That’s… that’s the family crest burned into the wood. This is my—my grandfather’s bow. Or, my grandfather was the last to use it, it was made for an ancestor in the Exalted Marches, I don’t…” 

The words spill out for lack of knowing what to say, just something to fill the space as Nathaniel, as ever, tries only to understand. He shakes his head and lifts his gaze to stare at Cousland. The other man looks back, level, tired blue eyes. 

“It’s yours now,” the Warden-Commander tells him. “Well. It’s yours by right, regardless. I asked Wade to repair it once I noticed the crest.”

_Give the man his family’s belongings and let him leave._

Ten words, a single, simple phrase, and Nathaniel’s world hasn’t quite been the same since.

He still doesn’t know what to think of Cousland. 

“I’m not the first in my family to be a Grey Warden,” he blurts out. Cousland tilts his head to one side, as though curious, and Nathaniel holds up the longbow between them. It’s a good weight. He’ll need to take it to the training grounds, get a feel for how it shoots, but he can’t imagine he’ll have much problem with adapting to it. “My grandfather, the one who last used this, his name was Padric Howe. He joined the Order before it returned to Ferelden, just after the war against Orlais. Vanished. No one in the family ever heard from him again. Now that I know about the Joining, I think he must have died.”

A shadow passes over Cousland’s face. He closes his eyes a moment, sighs. “I should see if Mhairi had…” he starts, quiet, more to himself than as part of the conversation, before shaking himself and speaking a little louder. “The Joining must be kept a secret, unless we should all be branded maleficar. But I think, with so few in our ranks after the Blight, keeping too many secrets might only hurt us.”

Nathaniel thinks of his sister. If he had died in the Joining, would anyone have told her? 

He wonders if Cousland is thinking of his own brother. 

“Father always said that he was a horrible man, abandoning his family to join a pointless cause.” Nathaniel shakes his head. His father had said many things. He’s starting to understand how many of them were wrong. “I grew up ashamed of him. Now, I see his bravery.”

“The only shame was your father’s.”

Cousland’s voice is very, very soft. If he’d said the same thing a month ago—had said the same thing a couple _weeks_ ago—Nathaniel might have had it in him to yell, to be furious. 

_Family heirlooms cannot be stolen by those of said family. Let him out._

“My father often forgot that nobility has another meaning,” he responds, just as quiet. “Thank you, Cousland. Commander. It’s good to have a part of my family’s legacy again. Something to be proud of.”

“Of course,” Cousland answers, and looks away at last. His tone shifts, and the moment passes, and Nathaniel stands before the Warden-Commander of Ferelden once again. “We’ll be departing again for Amaranthine tomorrow, en route to the Blackmarsh. It’s a swamp, in the spring, in Ferelden, so pack appropriately.”

Nathaniel smiles, against his better judgment. “I missed very little of Ferelden, when I was in the Free Marches... except the mud.”

Cousland doesn’t really smile back, but Nathaniel thinks he looks a little less weary. Or, something like that.

* * *

Two days after the banns and lords and nobles of the arling had gathered, and departed, once again, with their private soldiers to keep themselves safe on the road, Aedan waits in the entrance hall of the Vigil. Sigrun is there, chipper as ever, badgering a guard with questions about the rain still falling from the skies. Howe stands off to one side, leaning against a pillar.

Oghren will show up next, Aedan knows, likely drunk, because if he’s drunk (so he says) he can’t be hungover. After him, Anders, who is, as Aedan has come to learn after several nights spent on the road and in the Deep, both an incredibly _light_ sleeper and an incredibly _late_ sleeper. He still misses breakfast half the time.

For the briefest of moments, he thinks of morning meals with his mother, on the balcony in the summertime. Slams the memory into a box and shuts it away.

Not here. Not now, not here.

Shaking his head as though to clear it, he steps past Sigrun and her endless questions, towards Howe. The other man is glaring at the wall, and Aedan almost thinks his stare is directed towards the griffon heraldry before he realizes it is, in fact, directed at a portrait on the wall.

Howe breaks his stare when he hears him approach, glancing over, glancing back.

“Funny.” He says this like it is not especially funny at all, staring up at the portrait. “Considering all the things that have been taken, it figures this would still be here.”

Eliane Bryland Howe had passed when they had both been young. It’s been years since Aedan has thought of her, much less seen her or a painting of her. But he doesn’t need to recognize the dark-haired woman to recognize the resemblance she holds with Howe, the same eyes, same cut of the jaw, same sharp brow.

“Your mother,” he says.

“My mother,” Howe agrees, continuing to stare at her. “My father _hated_ her. He only dragged this painting out when my grandmother visited, though that wasn’t often. I was paraded before her like a soldier on inspection, and she would pick over every flaw while Father waited his turn.”

The bitterness there is—startling. Aedan makes himself look _at_ Howe and not slightly to the left of him, makes himself think about what he’s hearing beyond just the voice of Rendon Howe’s son. 

The Brylands had been closer with the Couslands than the Howes, despite the marriage between Eliane and the Howe patriarch. Aedan was never certain why; some of the stories behind old grudges, he’d been forced to memorize, so as not to misspeak or misstep. Others… well, his father had considered Rendon Howe a friend, a true statement no matter how it burns and festers in his mind. All he’d been told about any tensions between the other two families was that they’d “disagreed.” No more, no less.

Disagreement seems an understatement, for the Bryland matriarch to take her frustrations out on her grandson. Disagreement seems an understatement, if Rendon Howe truly hated his wife.

(in the back of his mind, a thought he doesn’t quite allow to fully form: _why_ did Rendon Howe send his son away?)

“Why did he hate your mother?”

Like Delilah’s letters, like this longbow, like every civil conversation the pair of them manage to have, the question is an olive branch. Howe came back to the Wardens wanting to understand. There can be no understanding if they don’t discuss what lies between them, tangled pasts and all.

Howe seems taken aback for a moment, less by the question’s content and more by that it was asked at all. 

“I don’t know,” he finally answers. “Her family was wealthy. I remember that much. But Grandmother was cold _before._ They wouldn’t touch me now with a ten-foot pole. I’d be as welcome there as a bad rash.”

 _Their loss._ The words press up against the back of his teeth, unexpected and only just held back, and—Howe is a good soldier, a fine marksman, loyal to his family, and so the sentiment is true enough. Still, Aedan doesn’t know where the thought came from.

“I hope you feel welcome here,” he says instead, with more sincerity than even he intended.

* * *

When they march (again), it’s in the rain ( _again_ ), an odd tension in the air; Oghren had found them in the immediate aftermath of some argument he’d gotten into, one he refuses to talk about or even acknowledge, though all of them are aware of it. And it lingers, from one day into the next. Nathaniel trusts these others enough to watch his back, for now, but he doesn’t _know_ them, certainly not well enough to try and address the nuggalope in the room.

Cousland makes an effort. Nathaniel sees him trying to talk to Oghren at one point, two days into their journey, to no success.

They make one night in the city of Amaranthine before needing to move on, and at its best the rain only lets up to a fine mist the entire time. Nathaniel has prepared for as much, but he’s thinking there might be something to _absence_ and _fondness_ , or however the saying goes. He’s cold and damp and his boots are going to be permanently caked in mud, at this rate.

“Cheer up,” Sigrun says at one point, nudging him with her shoulder as they walk. Between the armor and her bony frame, though, it’s a very _forceful_ nudge. Nathaniel isn’t sure if he wants to scowl at the dwarven woman, or at the mud of the road, or at the rainy weather; he thinks he could stand in the sun for all of Bloomingtide and never be dry. “No one loves a grump.”

He decides to scowl at everything, as a compromise.

“For a dead woman,” he grits out, “you’re remarkably perky.”

Sigrun’s hair is limp and wet, and her every footstep comes away from the ground with a thick _squelch._ She smiles back up at him all the same. 

Nathaniel takes back every comment he’s ever made about missing the mud of Ferelden.

“I could be less perky, if you like.” Sigrun winks and presses one hand against her breastplate, throwing out the other in a dramatic gesture. “The darkness of the Deep Roads is seeped into my soul!” she cries, suddenly overwrought, and Nathaniel almost misses a step in his surprise. “The world… is dead! My heart is black. Alas! Woe! Woe!”

She draws the last word out for a handful of seconds, then trails into a shuddering, gasping breath. Nathaniel rolls his eyes and makes to ignore her. He looks away. Nearly misses another step and trips again.

Cousland, walking just a little bit ahead of them and off to the side, has ducked his head down, part of his face hidden in his cowl. It isn’t enough to cover the wide smile, and it does nothing at all to muffle the quiet, brief laugh. Nathaniel stares without realizing that he’s staring, because—

Well, now that he thinks about it, this might be the first time the Commander has ever smiled around them. Or, smiled at all.

He looks younger, like this.

Sigrun follows his gaze, and she grins. The skull pattern across her face stretches with the expression. She clears her throat.

“I have known the horrors of the Deep! Never again shall I know true peace, for all… is dark! Woe! Woe…!”

Anders and Oghren both glance her way, then catch what she and Nathaniel have both seen and keep quiet. In the mist and fog with a day of travel on foot ahead of them, Sigrun makes her jokes. The Wardens march, their steps feeling lighter, and their Commander laughs into the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on Cousland's longbow: I was lost in the DA wiki, as I often am, and found that there was a longbow in Awakening called Misery. Too good an opportunity to pass up.
> 
> Thanks again for being patient with the delay on this chapter, and thanks for taking the time to read through. As always, comments and kudos are very much appreciated!!
> 
> Come follow me on Tumblr for more writing things @floraobsidian


	7. The Blackmarsh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is about the level of violence that's going to happen in-narrative? Action sequences are not my favorite, but it's Dragon Age, so there's going to be some levels of gore and body horror, and while I know I've covered that with the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag, this is just a quick disclaimer that what's in this chapter is likely to be as bad as it gets.
> 
> Anyway, have some plot.

Amaranthine is cold and damp, as it ever is. The Pilgrim’s Path turns onward, down away from the city, to the outskirts of the arling and to Denerim beyond it, by way of the Wending Wood. The darkspawn are present in droves, rarely organized in a way that presents a true danger to them, but alarming all the same. Some of them speak— _that_ is alarming, in a way Nathaniel can’t quite begin to articulate himself.

The Free Marches are no stranger to darkspawn. There are gaps to the Deep Roads all along the Waking Sea, and as he has well learned, the nearer one gets to places like Kirkwall the more likely one is to encounter strange things, in the places where the Veil grows thin. Darkspawn are not supposed to _speak._ They are twisted beyond recognition from what they once were; the possibility that one can fall victim to the Blight as a ghoul, be dragged into the dark and corrupted into the ‘spawn, and _remember_ makes Nathaniel feel sick to his stomach. It’s a fate worse than death.

The nausea does not abate the nearer they get to the Blackmarsh. He grew up with stories about this place, and the look of it—the dark damp, the mud and fog and _stench_ that rises up from the murk—does nothing to assuage his nerves.

He keeps one arrow at the ready and hums to calm his nerves.

Sigrun has no such reservations: “This is so exciting! So dark, and damp! And all these weird, spindly trees!”

“You’re an odd one,” Oghren mumbles, reaching for his flask. “Jus’... an odd one.”

“Thank you!” Sigrun chirps in reply.

Cousland almost smiles. Nathaniel can see a flicker of it across his face as he turns, his own longbow at the ready. “There’s darkspawn ahead—distant, but there. You’ll get better at being able to sense them the more we encounter.”

He isn’t fond of the idea that they’ll encounter more of the ‘spawn. But—they’re Wardens. This is their duty, now. His duty.

Cousland tells Sigrun to take point, scouting ahead along what remains of a road through the marshland; directs Nathaniel to flank on the right while he flanks on the left, Oghren tailing the party, Anders in the center. They slow their pace. Nathaniel presses his lips together and holds back more nervous humming, and the only noise for several long minutes thereafter is their boots in the mud.

No wind blows, the air unnaturally still. There are no birds, no insects. It is utterly, unnervingly _silent._

“Anyone else scared out of their wits?” Anders whispers off to the left. An instant later, Nathaniel’s heart skips a beat—fire runs through his veins, and he shouts a wordless warning as a great black-furred beast leaps at him from the brush.

An arrow sinks into its eye, emerging out the back of its skull. The wolf collapses, momentum carrying it forward so it skids across the ground another several feet, just inches from where Nathaniel stands—Cousland notches another arrow and shoots at a second wolf coming around on their left—Oghren lets out a battle cry, which tells Nathaniel that there’s likely more behind them—he sees Sigrun draw her blades—another wolf, coming from the right, growling low and moving towards him.

His first arrow lands into its chest, burrowing inches into flesh and lung. The wolf stumbles but keeps moving, leaps—teeth clamped around his arm, and he shoves back panic and instinct to press _forward,_ to the back of its mouth where it can’t bite down as hard—fumbles for his dagger and stabs, once, twice.

It isn’t a long fight. Skirmishes rarely are, even with the ‘spawn. Oghren braces his boot against the neck of one of the beasts to yank his axe from its corpse. Cousland bends down to inspect one nearest to him and to remove the arrow of his which killed it. 

Sigrun appears next to Nathaniel out of the shadows, mud splattered across her face and a scrape across her cheek— knocked to the ground, but otherwise unhurt. She frowns at the now-mangled bracer on his left arm.

“You good?”

“The armor took the brunt of it.” Nathaniel slides his fingers under the leather, but his sleeve doesn’t feel torn. It hurts, and he’ll likely have a spectacular set of bruises to show for it later, but it could have been far, far worse. “Didn’t even break skin.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She smiles, sharp. “Be kinda shitty if you got your arm ripped off, and we only just got here.”

“Quite,” he responds dryly. “Commander, what sort of wolves _are_ these?”

Wolves are massive creatures. Nathaniel remembers the first time he hunted one, and how odd and still it had looked lying dead on its side, nose to tail almost as long as he was tall. He placed his hand several inches into its fur, feeling the soft undercoat; he’d eventually had the pelt made into a winter cloak to send home to Delilah. He wonders what happened to that cloak.

But _these_ are larger creatures by far. Though their coats are matted and patchy, their corpses unusually thin, they stood taller than any other wolves he’s seen before, and protruding from their shoulders and spine are several long, ridged quills, grey and muddied. Bone? Nathaniel is reluctant to touch one and find out. They had fought with strange ferocity, slavering fangs bared in a snarl, eyes foggy and clouded.

“Blight wolves.” Cousland pulls another arrow free, inspects it for damage. “Everything living can be blighted. Plants, animals… people.”

“Long as the critters don’t start talking, too.” Oghren rests his axe on his shoulder, still dripping with blood. “Suppose that lost us our surprise?”

Cousland pauses to listen, as do they all. No wind. No birds, no insects. Breathing, and the _drip-drip_ of blood.

In the distance, a high, mournful howl. Two. Three, five, a half dozen, more.

“My earlier question still stands,” Anders says mildly.

But they have a duty, so they regroup, and they move forward.

Nathaniel hums, nervous and wavering.

* * *

The fire racing through his blood doesn’t abate the deeper they go into the Blackmarsh; it grows to background noise, after a point, but it never _leaves._ They fight and kill more of the blighted wolves, and a couple of those insect-like creatures from the Deep near Kal’Hirol. The roads twist and wind, but there are no footprints in the thick mud to show anyone else but them have been here in a long time; in the places where the path vanishes, they bundle their gear to their shoulders and wade through the muck until it reappears again.

There is old and stagnant water, and silt, and mud soaked through his boots. Nathaniel grits his teeth and keeps moving. At least he isn’t Oghren—the dwarf hasn’t stopped muttering obscenities, the water chest-deep for him in some places, whereas for Nathaniel, at worst, it only comes to just below the waist.

“Just like the Deep,” Sigrun whispers to herself.

“Is it?” Anders asks.

“If I keep saying it is, uh… maybe?”

Cousland holds up one hand in a fist, and they slow, fall silent. The water runs into shallows, and before them, a wide clearing. Across the way, where old roads split into the rocky hills that bracket this side of the marsh, Nathaniel can see a camp—a small tent, a firepit, what might be a bag or a sack, possibly supplies. His blood burns.

“Sigrun,” Cousland murmurs, and Sigrun wades out of the marsh and onto dry land with nary a sound but for the dripping of her armor. The clearing provides little space to hide, but she skirts around the edges to the campsite, and even though he’s looking for her he loses sight of her once. Then he blinks, and she’s at the firepit, checking for any signs of a trap. At her nod, the rest of them flank out and move forward. 

Anders takes a moment to rifle through his pack, and pulls out the folded map retrieved from Kristoff’s room in Amaranthine. “I think he marked a few potential campsites…”

Nathaniel keeps a lookout with Oghren as the others search—Sigrun, through the camp, while Cousland looks over the map with Anders. He takes up position looking down the road to where it widens; beyond, a rickety wooden bridge over the stagnant murk, and a pair of tall, rusted, wrought-iron gates that stand half opened in a crumbling stone wall. Past those gates are what remains of the town that used to call the Blackmarsh home, left in ruins since before the war against Orlais. Haunted, the stories said.

He knows battle, knows death, but to walk in a place where the dead are restless gives him pause, even now.

They confirm that this is a location Kristoff marked as a campsite, and find a pack of supplies with a steel griffon clasp securing it shut in the far back of the tent—the confirmation is a good thing to have. But the campsite is old and untouched, the firepit cold and damp, water puddling in the middle from the drizzling rain.

Nathaniel is getting a bad feeling about this. He sees nothing substantial in the mist and shadows, but he keeps an arrow at the ready all the same.

“Move out.” Cousland’s voice is quiet, though it carries to the rest of their number. “Kristoff’s notes indicate he intended to scout around the village before going in. We’ll look for other signs of him before investigating the buildings.”

“Could’ve made another campsite,” Anders suggests.

“And left all his supplies behind,” Oghren snipes back.

“Didn’t you say you had soldiers from the Vigil scout out this way for him before you came to the Deep Roads?” Sigrun asks.

Nathaniel hadn’t known that, though—no, maybe there had been a mention of it? He can’t recall. Cousland nods, looking grim.

“I did, and as of our return from Kal’Hirol, there had been no word back. Sigrun, take point again, everyone else fall in line.”

So they do.

Nathaniel now expects to find the bodies of Vigil’s Keep soldiers around every twisting bend in the marshy paths, sees a limp hand or leg in every long shadow. But there are no bodies, and there are no more blight wolves even as his blood still burns, and there are no darkspawn… yet.

Sigrun stops and raises one hand in the air, starts to signal further before stopping partway, likely realizing around the same time as everyone behind her that her signs are dwarven, used by the legionnaires. 

“Empty clearing,” she says instead, no louder than a whisper. “One body. Don’t see anything else.”

Cousland nods and gestures for them all to move forward. The path takes a bend before it opens up into a clearing, as Sigrun had said, and there are small dirt paths through the brush leading away into the fog of the Blackmarsh. The earth is muddy, churned up, impossible to distinguish any footprints or how recently someone might have passed through. In the middle of it all, a corpse.

The dead man was a Warden—Nathaniel can see the griffon heraldry emblazoned across his shield, which is strapped to his back. The silver emblem muddied but still visible on his sleeve. He’s been dead at least a week, left to lay here, bloodied, to rot and feed the wolves; the stench is awful.

“Poor sod,” Oghren says, and takes a drink.

Cousland kneels next to the body, covering his mouth and nose with part of his cowl, and pushing at its shoulder with his free hand to roll the body over. The face, pallid, sunken, beginning to rot, might have been handsome once, short brown hair and beard, the eyes now covered in film and the skin smeared with blood and fluid. But it matches the description they have of Kristoff.

Something isn’t right, though. His shield is still on his back. His sword is in its sheath. _Something_ isn’t right.

“Damn,” Cousland mutters. Nathaniel’s heart skips a beat; Oghren is already raising his axe, and Sigrun steps backwards into the shadow of a tree and out of sight. From a ledge above them, movement, and an armored darkspawn leaps down just feet away from where Cousland is still crouched on the ground.

Nathaniel draws an arrow, but there’s movement from behind him, multiple sets of footsteps. Surrounded. _Fuck._

He thinks it’s a hurlock, the one leaning over where Cousland is, dripping black ichor and wearing mismatched leathers and chainmail, a massive, hooked greatsword carried with alarming ease in just one hand. It speaks, and its voice sounds like the grating of stone.

“Yes… _that_ is your… Grey Warden……” It rasps, hisses out some words, cuts others short. Nathaniel— _none_ of them—dare to move while Cousland is in reach of its blade, not unless he signals otherwise. “The Mother! The Mother _told_ it to me… that _if_ he was lured… to this place and _slain…_ that in time you _would_ come…” 

A Warden murdered, all for a trap? Nathaniel grits his teeth in anger. He knows nothing of this ‘Mother’ beyond what the darkspawn in Kal’Hirol had said, right before trying to incinerate them all, but he thinks he would like to greet her with arrows.

Cousland shifts. Slowly, he stands up, and the darkspawn makes no move to attack him yet; he looks _up_ at it, for while he’s a tall man himself, the creature is taller still. One of his hands rests on the pommel of his sword, though Nathaniel has never seen him use it. His voice is steady, almost pleasant, when he responds.

“Did she tell you that you would answer, for killing a soldier of the Grey?”

It laughs. Or, Nathaniel thinks that the noise it makes is a laugh. The sound chills him to the bone, and echoes strangely across the silent marshland.“The _Mother…_ she is _no_ prophet…! But she _is_ most _clever_ , oh _yes_ , that she is…” It steps forward, over Kristoff’s body, as Cousland takes a step back. “I, the _first,_ I am bringing to _you_ a message…”

The other darkspawn start to close in around them. Nathaniel nocks an arrow and aims it at the one nearest, though he does not yet fire, and it stops.

“The _Mother_ , she… will not al _low_ you to _further_ his plan… whether you _know_ of this or _not_ , and _she…_ is _send_ ing you a gift!”

It lifts one hand. Cousland starts to draw his sword—Nathaniel shoots the darkspawn before him—Sigrun and Oghren both rushing forward—the world, going green and bright and strange, and nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for taking the time to read through, and I hope you enjoyed. Comments and kudos are v much appreciated.
> 
> Come find me and the occasional writing update on Tumblr @floraobsidian


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